This week its company, Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), declared that AllTheWeb has indexed more Web sites than Google: 2,095,568,809 Web pages versus Google's 2,073,418,204.
Does this make AllTheWeb.com better? Not necessarily. It uses different search technology -- putting more emphasis on keywords, while Google ranks sites based on how often other sites link to them.
They'll each give you slightly different results. I still believe Google is the best search engine, but AllTheWeb is a good one to turn to when Google lets you down.
AllTheWeb does, however, offer a few things Google doesn't.
For starters, it claims to have the freshest index of all the search engines, fully refreshing within every 7 to 11 days.
AllTheWeb also has a couple of special searches Google doesn't:
• You can search FTP files -- which basically means searching millions of files that are on computers connected to the Internet, but are not actually Web pages.
• You can search for MP3 music files.
• You can search for videos, and even limit it by file type, searching for only MPEG, Real or Quicktime videos, for example.
• And soccer fans caught in the grip of World Cup fever will also find FAST's MegaSoccer search site to be a real kick.
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