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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
But after google, the only redeeming feature it had was babelfish -- and now google translates webpages better, too.
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.
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
News. Google's may be experimental, but it's great. I've dropped most of the science news portals I visit in favour of google.
Puerile searches. I've just done a search for "pubic health" on both google and AV. The latter returned nothing.
Uptodatedness; google hit my site less than three hours ago. No record of AV at all at all.
Of course, all this is based on a (really) quick evaluation of AV, and as such is probably unfair, hasty and uninformed. In the best slashdot tradition.
Search results for "free donkey pr0n":
AltaVista - 162
Google - about 500
'nuff said.
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.
Then you must be new to the net. AltaVista (then owned by Digital) owned the search rankings for a while, and then Excite came on fairly strong and took the crown (Excite was actually a great site: They had a clean page, great results, and they did cute things like changing the graphics by the time of year, etc). Around that time the .COM bubble started expanding quickly, and both did some incredibly stupid things to try to capitalize on their positions: Becoming variations of Yahoo, or shopping hubs, etc. They squandered the market they exceled in to pursue what the VCs told them would be of value.
Of course around this time Google came on strong. Google's primary selling point, of course, was the cleanliness of the design and lack of advertisements.
The bastards have the search result links prefixed and they use JavaScript to hide that fact when you mouse over so they can spy on what links you click. I think Google may have done that in the past, but their links look normal now.
d =477b1d8923f776&r=http%3A%2F%2Fchorus.inav.net%2F% 7Ebjackson%2F')" title="Open result in a new window" bgcolor=#C9D8EE id="bl3" width=10 onMouseOver="status='http://chorus.inav.net/~bjack son/'; return true;" onMouseOut="status=''; return true;"> </td>
<td class=csr onclick="BlOp('/r?ck_sm=5282c169&ref=200020080&ui
- Speed. Speed is very important in a search engine, if it ain't fast it ain't usable as a tool for everyday work. I tried a real life search for "Jaguar" as well as a search that is almost guaranteed not to be cached.
- Paid placement at the top of the results, or "sponsored links" as the search engines like to call it.
- Relevant matches. Specifically I wanted to see how near the top Jag-Lovers, the largest non-profit Jaguar enthusiast site, got.
The result were conclusive: Google wins hands down on all counts. Altavista lists half a page of paid for "sponsored links" before any actual search results are returned. Google has none, but curiously the topmost link is for MacOS X - Jaguar. Did Apple pay Google to have MacOS placed above any links for Jaguar cars, or is this a result of thousands of Mac users linking to Apple's MacOS X site?Altavista was sloooow, taking several seconds to return a non-cached search result (try searching for something "unusual", or a completely made up word). Google is fast, returning the first results page instantly, no matter what.
Relevance: MacOS X is of course very relevant to a search for "Jaguar", even if it's not what I expected ;-). Google lists it at the very top of the first page, Altavista has a mention of MacOS X at the bottom of page 1, but not Apple's homepage for OS X. Jag-Lovers was only listed on page 3 on Altavista, after 3 pages of various commercial sites, including of course Jaguar Cars' various sites. Google lists Jag-Lovers near the bottom of page 1, after Jaguar Cars' sites.
There is no question in my mind, Google is the best tool. YMMV. Oh, and yes, I remember when we all marvelled at Altavista and read about how the project started out as an idea scratched down on a napkin over lunch at DEC. DEC is dead, and so will Altavista be soon enough. Google is so much better, so why should Altavista survive in the long run?
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
This is something that is not well known to most of you, so let me explain:
Google seems to be randomising results on commercial categories, in order to force commercial sites to pay Adwords to be on top. The sites that used to be on top, the most popular sites, are no longer there.
We have been tracking the cats and keywords affected by the randomised effect since September, keyword showing different, degraded, results with each reload. We have found most competitive travel, hotel and adult related keywords seem to be randomised. The result? Sites have been suddenly deprived of their legitimated traffic, and are been forced to pay AdWords, Google Sponsor programs to survive.
Just one example. A we are following a keyword that used to have 10.000.000 result before the September Google Algorithm update ( the so call Adwords Update). Since 10/300/02 the keyword showing a only 6.000.000 results 25% of the time. Sometimes it has anything between 170.000 and 200.000 results, and 35% of the time it only list 142.000 sites, and the results are pure junk: the top 10 sites are sites without a domain name (only the ip), sites with "Fireworks Splice HTML" as the only text on it, and control panel sites with a "Personalise Your Home Page" title on it. The result? Sites have been suddenly deprived of their legitimated trafic, and are been forced to pay AdWords, Google Sponsor programs to survive.
Belief me, this Altavista move is VERY WELCOME from the webmaster community. Google is handling 90% of the no-MSN queries now. It is very close to became a monopoly, and it's last two month behaviour shows it in not going to be a "good hearted" monopoly, if such a thing exist.
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.
Completely unrelated, but try a search on google for "stoner girl" and look at what the third result is ...
How did THAT get there????
Seriously, how did it get there?
--NBVB
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