Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

AltaVista Can't Keep Up

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the incredible-shrinking-net dept.

jedrek writes "MSNBC is reporting that Altavista, the great search engine, isn't able to keep it's listings current. Altavista hasn't renewed it's index since July which, seeing how it's almost November, is a tad too long." AltaVista was my weapon of choice until Google came along and was so much better that most net users jumped ship.

14 of 434 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What use is Altavista nowadays? by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google does have an advanced search, with phrase mayching and the "AND, OR" boolean matching that made altavista usefull. It just isn't as widely publicized as altavista's was.

    Try here for the advanced search, and here for how to use Google's pattern matching, its actually quite good (as is everything in Google).

  2. Re:google vs altavista by keesh · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google also allows this. Go to http://www.google.com/advanced_search and look near the bottom of the page.

  3. Left behind by maniac11 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Alta Vista has certainly been an innovator in its day... and was by far the best search engine until Google.

    They were the first to have a searchable full-text database and asian character sets (Chinese, Korean, Japanese).

    Don't forget about Babel Fish either... seems like this alone would be enough to keep them alive...

    Ah well, wish them luck in a very difficult market.

    --
    Guvegrra?
  4. Even better than Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I used to use google until I found http://vivisimo.com/

    Organized search results with document clustering

  5. Sure it does! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yes, google does boolean. OR works - but spaces (outside of quotes) are assumed ANDs.

    Try the advanced search page

  6. Re:If only google would... by TheTomcat · · Score: 5, Informative

    write.only.memory

    is the proper way to search for "write only memory" on google.

  7. What about + and -?? by alienmole · · Score: 3, Informative
    Forget the advanced search. Try using stragically placed + and - to force presence or absence of terms. E.g. the following:

    +Signetics +"write only memory" -antonym

    returns a bogus press release as it's first result, which may be what you're looking for. (I used "antonym" because many jargon file copies don't explicitly say they're from the jargon file.)

    I agree with the person who said you may be overspecifying your searches. The point is to find the stuff you want - as long as it lets you do that without much difficulty, does it really matter if you can't explicitly specify a true boolean search? You'd have to show me a case where Altavista really can find something that Google can't before I'd be convinced. All you've done is show that you weren't that familiar with Google.

    1. Re:What about + and -?? by Earlybird · · Score: 3, Informative
      • Forget the advanced search. Try using stragically placed + and - to force presence or absence of terms.
      Google ignores the plus, since it considers all terms important in the query. It honours the minus, however, for exclusion. Please realize that Googles honours phrases for page ranking. So if you're searching for "write only memory", it sorts on proximity, so you'll get exact phrase hits first, and the lower-ranked results will list documents that merely contain the words "write", "only" and "memory".
  8. Re:shorter name? by big.ears · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try av.com. Its short, sweet, easy to remember, and just as useless as altavista.com.

  9. Re:Google clearly superior by RedWizzard · · Score: 3, Informative

    But most porn pics don't actually have "porn" in the filename so they don't get ranked highly when you search for "porn". Try something like "anal". You'll get a few on the first page if you have the mature content filter off.

  10. Re:If only google would... by jesser · · Score: 3, Informative

    "write only memory" (with quotes) works fine for me and returns the same results as write.only.memory.

    --
    The shareholder is always right.
  11. + and - is better than boolean AND and OR by ArcadeNut · · Score: 2, Informative
    This may be a little redundant, but the + and - are far better than the AND and OR used by Altavista.

    With the + and - you get AND, OR, NOT, and MAYBE.

    Google treats multiple words as OR conditions and also uses them as context indicators.

    searching for THIS THAT will find things that have "THIS" or "THAT" or "THIS THAT". Pages where the words are closer together become more relavent. (The OR condition)

    searching for +THIS +THAT is the same as saying "THIS and THAT" on AltaVista. Pages won't be returned unless both words appear on the page. (The AND condition)

    searching for THIS +THAT is saying search for THAT, and if it has THIS, then include it as well (Thats the MAYBE condition ).

    searching for THIS -THAT means return pages that have THIS on them, but do not include any pages that have THAT in them. (The NOT condition)

    As you can see, it lends itself to some very powerful searches with very simple syntax. A far better solution than AND and OR IMHO.

    --
    Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
  12. Re:Name too long by glenmark · · Score: 2, Informative
    I also remember not too long ago another search engine, with a horribly long name. Northernlight or something like that. What were they thinking?

    Northernlight can also be reached at nlsearch.com. Most comprehensive search engine on the web.

    --
    *** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
  13. Google has a linux penguin too by Albanach · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is it just me, or has no-one mentioned http://www.google.com/linux It can be useful to add linux to all your searches automagically, and you do get a groovy tux in the google logo to boot.