Slashdot Mirror
Altavista Renewed
Waterlooppln77 writes "Altavista has recently changed their searchengine to allow more competition with Google.com. It offers a whole set of new features, like searching through PDF documents,
and more importantly got rid of the commercial portal thingie." Anyone remember
when Alta Vista was the best search engine?
Any word on whether the're also playing nice about which sites are displayed first?
-=fshalor
The results on altavista still have not gotten better... they always seem to be upwards of six months old... where google seems to be within the month in most cases... hell...I see google's bot hit my personal webserver about every two to three weeks. I have not seen altavista's bot in a very very very long time..
Anyone remember when Alta Vista was the best search engine?
While that was an innocent, playful poke at the AV folks, let's not forget that some of us still remember when Google was "just an academic project" and its founders were "of course going to give all future modifications to their PageRank algorithm".
Some of us were let down by the Stanford research project that "sold out" and failed to give back to the community from which it was birthed originally. I'm proud of Google, don't get me wrong; but there's still a small part of me that would have liked to see it stay non-commercial.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Fresh, relevant results: AltaVista refreshes 50% of the results daily. Results include PDF files as well as Web pages, images, audio and video files.
How is this possible. Surely you can't poll 50% of the web every day. Nor could you even poll 50% of the spiderable web every day. This seems absurd, but its their number one ranked improvement.
AltaVista Shortcuts and AltaVista Shortcut Answers find results on Web pages that are usually invisible to search engines. (on the U.S. Site only)
Umm does this mean Alta Vista is going to start ignoring ROBOTS.TXT permissions? I dont think they are talking about PDF documents because they called that feature out in a separate bullet. So what is the Invisi-weba dn why do only they have access to it?
this soundslike vacuous hype.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Altavista became way too bloated and way too commercial, and it will wither and die away within 5 years. Everything it does, google does, but without the sense of bloat or loading 200k webpages full of ads.
3 years ago you would have been saying that X was going to whither away and die because everything it did, AltaVista did better. In case you haven't noticed, Google hit the point where they decided that not losing money would be wise, and they've started to fill up on advertisements. For all we know Google might be 2MB of Flashvertisements in a years time.
Personally I'm willing to use whatever service offers me the best search results. Whether someone develops a new CredibilityRank(TM - Patent Pending) system that eliminates the garbage, or a phonetic search for the chronic misspellings that plague the net, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
However, BabelFish translates Japanese, and Google doesn't.
I partly apologize for being so critical, but obviously they tried to go for Google's look (unfair). Even though imitation is a form of flatery, AltaVista should stand on its own merits which is the quality of the search results.
...altavista was the only good search engine. Then everybody decided to make their search engine a "portal." Except Google... hmmm... :)
vk.
vk.
Google hit the point where they decided that not losing money would be wise, and they've started to fill up on advertisements.
Google needs to make money. How do you think they pay for all of their bandwidth? Anyway, the only ads they have are unobtrusive text ads. That's great, considering that advertising everywhere else on the net is getting worse and worse every day, with popups and animated ads. I can't see how anyone can complain about Google's advertisements.
Also, Google will never get flashvertisements or anything of that sort. They know one of the main reasons people use their site is the clean interface with no annoying ads. They won't abandon that. They're making a very good profit just the way it is.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Which is why we use Sherlock 3.
A list of languages that will surely blow away google and babelfish: (and it does use the systran engine too).
Dutch
Chinese Traditional and Simplified
French
German
Greek
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Portugese
Russian
Spanish
The only language that might be useful (to me, that is missing) is Latin.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
Or to be accurate, what ads Google has are generally somewhat relevant to whatever you searched for, and meanwhile don't hit you over the head. Google is the only place where I semi-regularly follow an ad link, because it's what I wanted anyway and didn't poke my eyes out trying to get my attention.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Google needs to make money. How do you think they pay for all of their bandwidth?
Why so defensive about Google? Indeed, why are so many on Slashdot so defensive about Google in general? It's a search engine with people looking to make a buck somehow -- It isn't a benevolent charity. I'm not saying it's a BAD thing that they've decided to get some income: I expect them to make money. Let's face it though: Google became prominent basically for doing what Microsoft gets slammed for (at least in the case of IE): They ate costs to get marketshare, and it worked beautifully. The number one reason that most people went to Google in the nascent years was the absolute lack of ads.
Also, Google will never get flashvertisements or anything of that sort. They know one of the main reasons people use their site is the clean interface with no annoying ads. They won't abandon that. They're making a very good profit just the way it is.
And you know this how? I like Google. I use Google exclusively for searching. I've used Google for years. However I don't love Google, and I owe them no loyalty outside of what they earn day to day by having the best search engine.
Don't blame Google, blame yourself. They owe nothing to you. They offer a free service to searchers, and as long as the service is good, searchers will visit (ask AltaVista about what heppens when your search turns to crap.)
Google is not a monopoly, since there are still numerous other search engines. People simply don't use them because most of the time, they're pretty bad. If you have to depend on Google for search traffic, then you really need to think about the fact you're that dependant on Google for your business model.
I guess its only the grownups and adults who can realize that at the end of the day putting a Lexus in your garage or being able to pay for private school tuition for all of your children (i.e. becoming financially independent) is a wee bit more important than "keeping it real" for some lame whiny high maintanence community.
In case anyone is wondering, no I'm not being sarcastic.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Besides, it's quite reasonable for Google to randomize results for roughly equal-valued matches.
Sites have been suddenly deprived of their legitimated traffic, and are been forced to pay AdWords, Google Sponsor programs to survive.
I'm not sure what the word "legitimated" means, but you make it sound like web sites are entitled to their Google ranking. Google can do whatever they want. As long as its users are happy with their search results, capitalism is working the way it should.
Instead of being mad at Google for wanting to be paid money for driving more traffic to your site (you other option being to do nothing and still have Google drive slightly less traffic to your site, for free), you should be thanking them for years of sending you customers for free.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Complaints of bogus Google rankings are, I think, quite entertaining. What, AltaVista ranked your site higher than Google?
See, Google is a really unique entity. Most successful companies are driven by business types, suits. Google is a big collection of computer scientists doing research, and taking a no-compromises approach to product quality. They decided to go for long-term value -- having happy, well-served customers, instead of the many sites that went with pop-up ads, corporate tie-ins, sponsored portal links and the like during the dot-com era to boost short-term profit.
As a result, Google is on top. And they got on top by doing the Right Thing, unlike almost everyone else in the industry. It's an excellent example of the quality-through-competition-and-enormous-market that Internet visionary types have been trumpeting since the dawn of the Internet.
Of course, not everyone is happy about this. Competing search engines, the ones that frequently have far more money backing them, yet still can't keep up, complain bitterly. The marketing types that used to be able to trick the simple algorithms the old search engines used, or buy positioning in the searches, can no longer do that. I constantly hear bitter complaining about that as well.
But you know what? Despite all the mudslinging I've seen from these types, I've yet to see Google blow up yet. They consistently provide near-magical search accuracy, finding what I'm looking for. They have a simple interface that is built around what the Web was intended to look like (i.e. not pixel-positioned, invisible-table-laden crap). They cost me nothing, other than a few simple text based ads (which are small and have helped me occasionally). Google is absolutely incredible. They happened to be in the right position at the right time, and as consumers flock happily to using Google rather than remembering DNS entries for websites, a lot of companies feel unsettled. In their traditional world, they could *buy* a DNS name for a load of money. They could sue anyone with a competing name. All of a sudden, they're thrown into a world where *they may have to compete for recognition with their smaller competitors*. It's what the Internet had promised for ages -- the ability of the little business to compete with the large one, where incumbents have no inherent advantage. A lot of companies dislike this intensely, hence all the bogus lawsuites and claims of falsifying search results that Google has made.
Google has always claimed that they wouldn't muck with search result ordering because it would cause customers to move away from their then-inferior product. I think that they're true to that, but it doesn't matter -- if they aren't, eventually people will migrate to whatever better search engine pops up. The sort of folks at Google understand trends and systemwide numerical movements based on small factors -- I doubt they'd make an argument like this without it being reasonable.
Google has even put out a whitepaper describing how their search engine works.
So we have a free service that has lesser ads than almost any commercial website, has uncanny accuracy, does *not* (unlike rivals who openly sell them) sell page rankings, has a science/engineering culture (instead of a business one), and is fantastically successful.
Finally, Google is under no onus to do anything. They are not a meaningful monopoly. The entire point of a monopoly is that you can erect barriers to competition by using your clout. You can always easily go to another website, and Google even published a fair bit of the foundational technology in their engine. You can't really go much further than they did to be open, free, and competitive. The point is that they have a superior product, and they are unwilling to screw their customers over to gain short-term bucks.
Contrast this to Microsoft, where you have a vast array of monopolies, compatibility and technical information issues that are visciously used to guard their markets, secrecy, inferior products, and a willingness to gouge the customer and do everything possible to keep them in line. And yet, Microsoft gets a slap on the wrist. If that's acceptable, Google sure as hell is.
When I search for "Altavista" on Google, I get Altavista. When I get something else, *then* I'll start being suspicious.
Finally, you claim that Google returns poor search results. I disagree. I have found that Google consistently returns the most useful results of any search engine I've used, and does a fantastic job of shoving "junk" results well after the "useful" results.
May we never see th