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Alta Vista Selling Top Matches
Kaa writes
Sent us
this wired story
about AltaVista wanting to serve advertisements as
search results. For words with more than 100,000 hits, they
will sell the number one result, indistinguishable from a normal
match. Here's a great quote "They will likely
implement this very quietly," the letter says. "One point
to remember is that AltaVista is still a popular search
engine among 'old time' Internet users who might react
vocally to this change once they know about it." "
I dunno how vocal I'll be. But AltaVista was my
primary search engine. Update: 04/15 01:21 by CT : Wired retracted the comment
that we posted here saying that it was unconfirmable.
Open Text did this--sold top ten results based on keywords. And where are they now? The search engine still exists, but is not exactly a household name.
BTW, there was a boycott movement when Open Text did this. Icons, linked to an information page. And Open Text did back down...
I have been a user of Alta Vista since the day they opened. But I will certainly dump them if they sell results.
Check out Altavista's own words from their URL submission page:
."
"AltaVista is an index, not a storing place for pages of low or misleading information value. Attempts to fill it with misleading or promotional pages lowers the value of the index for everyone. Left unchecked, this behavior would make Web indexes and our search experience worthless
Their words are so true...
My initial reaction to this was the same as everyone else's seems to have been - that it is a Bad Thing. When you do a web search you want the results sorted by word count, not amount payed, right ?
Actually I do not think so. When I do a web search I want the results sorted by *relevancy*. The big deal in designing a search engine is working out just how relevant the results are, and bear in mind that most users are, as ever, clueless. They are going to do stupid searches for "sex", "football", etc. Search engine usage statistics bear this out. Keyword count is not a sufficient standard of relevancy for a search like this - how much people are prepared to pay may well be a better one. Yahoo and some of the other search engines have been producing adverts more-or-less mixed in with search results for some time now.
What disturbs me more than anything else is the proposal that this be done 'quietly' (though clearly now it will not be long until most of the world knows). People should know what they are getting.
Of course, I do not do searches for "sex" and "football", because its a waste of time, and I have better sources for such things. Google (which is now may favourite search engine) has a much better way of trying to find relevant links, which is much more appropriate for the kinds of searches I tend to do.
I agree with this post. When you use a search engine, you trust that the sites are listed in an order of relevance and not one of advertiser preference. You expect that a banner ad will be placed according to your query, but if the results are skewed, what's the point.
/.ers happy. In the long run, though, they are one and the same. Alta Vista is number one because everyone recommends it. They have a reputation and they return good results. If they place those results for sale, they lose both the reputation, and, to a degree, the good results.
This isn't a case of commercialism vs. the web. It's a case of Alta Vista not understanding their customer base. If they change the product, they will change their customer. Alta Vista's best business practice is the one which will earn them the most money, not the one which will make the most
Many posters have recommended Google, both for its banner-free site and for the quality of hits. I try Google first, but Alta Vista was always my second choice. It's an excellent search engine. Google will have banner ads, or it will go away.
TANSTAAFL. But the lunch you pay for should be edible.
I've been using Google.com very happily for some time now. It has increased my research productivity by leaps and bounds!
Use http://www.google.com
It's by far the best search engine I've ever used. What you are looking for almost always shows up in the top 3 matches, if not the first.
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Lately I've really only been using Google. It seems to me that the google people have created a great serch engine that actually returns GOOD results. At the moment they (google) don't even have any add on their site. Don't know if it will stay that way, but I hope it does. I've since stopped using excite/yahoo/altavista/hotbot/etc.....
Palin...