AltaVista Overview

AltaVista began in December 1995. It was the " Google" of its day, providing relevant results and having a following of loyal users that loved the service.

AltaVista is owned by Overture, which Yahoo! purchased in July 2003. AltaVista is powerful and it's fast, mainly used for pinpoint searching of narrow topics and people in the news. It is popular because it successfully narrows search topics.

Alta Vista is one of the most inclusive search engines, although not necessarily the best search engine for every use. AltaVista's main or organic results are supplied by Yahoo!, sponsored listings are from Overture, and the directory listings are provided by DMOZ Open Directory Project .

AltaVista and Innovation

AltaVista, which means "a view from above," was inspired by a team of experts with a fascination for keeping track of information. During the spring of 1995, scientists at Digital Equipment Corporation's Research lab in Palo Alto, CA, devised a way to store every word of every HTML page on the Internet in a fast, searchable index. This led to AltaVista's development of the first searchable, full-text database on the World Wide Web.

AltaVista Milestones

• Delivers Internet's first web searchable index (1995).
• First multilingual search capabilities on the Internet.
• First Internet search engine to launch Image, Audio and Video search capabilities.
• Most advanced Internet search features and capabilities: multimedia search, translation & language recognition, and specialty search.
• Awarded 61 search-related patents, more than any other Internet search company.

AltaVista Loses Focus

In 1998, there was an attempt to turn the AltaVista search engine into a portal site that saw the company lose its focus on the importance of its search technology. This resulted in AltaVista losing ground against other players on the search landscape. Search result relevancy suffered as did the quality of AltaVista's listings because the crawler's coverage of the web was not keeping up witht the new crawler technologies of the other search engine companies.

AltaVista Today

AltaVista now is once again focusing on the importance of the Internet search. AltaVista, like AllTheWeb, gets results from Yahoo. Tabs above the search window let you go beyond the standard web search to find images, MP3 audio, video, human category listings and news results. Providing the same results as Yahoo, some may prefer the lighter feel AltaVista provides the end user.

Originally owned by Digital, AltaVista was taken over by Compaq in 1998, when it bought out Digital. Eventually turned into a private company controlled by CMGI, it was purchased by Overture in April 2003. It later became part of Yahoo when Yahoo bought Overture.

Website Submission to Alta Vista

AltaVista is an important crawler-based search engine because, although its popularity has dropped over the past year or so, significant numbers of people still use it to search the web.

As with most Internet crawlers, back links is the best way to get listed for free, but AltaVista search engine does accept submissions on their AltaVista add URL page.

There are currently two ways to get listed in the AltaVista search engine:

• Overture Site Match
• Basic Submission - Yahoo free submission

The AltaVista Express Inclusion program has been discontinued. Legacy Express Inclusion customers will continue to receive distribution on the historical AltaVista network until their subscriptions expire.

The basic submit is free. This option allows you to submit up to 5 URLs at a time. When you use this option, it will be between four and ten weeks before your submission is listed. They do not guarantee inclusion using this method, and do not guarantee any specific frequency of site refresh.

FAQs and Submission Policies: Submit no more than 5 pages in a given day and don’t spamdex or you’ll be penalized. There is no limit to the pages that can be indexed, but Alta Vista won’t index pages that are virtually the same or too similar. Allow 4 to 6 weeks and expect subsequent spidering at monthly intervals.

Alta Vista has software that looks for spamming, and they claim that they spend a lot of time and energy doing just that, looking for spam. If detected, the site may be blacklisted from AltaVista.

Virtual IP spam … "If being found via search engines is important to your business, be very careful about where you have your pages hosted. If the hosting service also hosts spammers and pornographers, you could wind up being penalized or excluded simply because the underlying IP address for that service is the same for all the virtual domains it includes." spam-support@altavista.com

Alta Vista no longer guarantees their spiders will index more than a couple layers deep, so it’s a good idea to submit all the important pages you want indexed or it may get missed.

Alta Vista search results list their Featured paid listings first, then three Overture entries, and finally results from the Alta Vista index.

To "unsubmit" a page, simply resubmit the URL, and the spider will go to it again, find the 404 not found status, and it will disappear from AltaVista within a few days.

If you wish to 'unsubmit' a page that is valid, you will need to write a robot.txt file for the site.

AltaVista SEO Methods

• AltaVista is a full-text search engine, meaning that it reads all text on a page.
• Use keywords in your meta tags and title tags.
• Remember to add high quality content to your site.
• Use appropriate keyword density for your title and meta tags.
• Make sure site is optimized and finished before submission.
• Keep the alt attributes descriptive and user friendly.

Pages that appear near the top of Alta Vista have the following attributes:

• Search terms appear in the title, Meta tags.
• Search terms appear frequently in the document.
• The queried words are found early in the document.
• The queried words are close to one another in the document. Use key words in your title.
• Use Meta tags for description and keywords.
• Use desired keywords in the body of your pages.
• Use keywords in the ALT = position of your IMG SRC.

Search Term Keywords

When picking search terms to use, think like the people you want to visit your web site. Decide what words those people would likely use when searching for a site like yours. There are also keyword generating tools available for use on the Internet.

Tips And Tricks for Top AltaVista Search Engine Placement

The thing to remember with AltaVista is to use keywords in the title and meta tags, have high quality content, use high keyword density, and make sure your site is optimized before submission. As with most search engines, submission alone doesn’t guarantee good positioning.

AltaVista at your Fingertips

The AltaVista Toolbar is free, customizable and gives you the research tools to perform searches and translations from your browser anywhere on the web. Download your AltaVista Toolbar Today!