AltaVista: View from Above

How many of you remember the splash AltaVista made in Spring of 1995? As the first searchable, full-text database on the Web, it quickly became a favorite. Developed by Digital Equipment's Palo Alto Research Labs, the name means "view from above." The inference was to view and track millions of Web documents from above.

Global Yearnings

AltaVista started serving the international community early on, offering the first Web multilingual search capabilities in 1997, then launching Babel Fish, a translation service that includes languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

AltaVista went on to launch numerous local international sites from 1999 through 2001 in countries such as Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Sweden, and 13 more. Today, AltaVista maintains over 20 country-specific search sites with over half its traffic originating outside the U.S. AltaVista executes approximately 1 billion search queries per month in 25 languages - an excellent vehicle for international exposure.

Multimedia Hub

One of the first to develop multi-media search technology, AltaVista introduced new image, audio, and video search centers early in the year 2000, creating the most extensive multimedia library on the Web at the time. Today, AltaVista indexes over 20 different file types in various collections (such as mp3, jpg, gif, Microsoft Windows Media, Apple QuickTime, etc.).

Expanded Revenues

AltaVista has focused on two core capabilities: providing Internet search services and enterprise search software. This formula enabled survival through last year's downturn. First, AltaVista went back to its pure search roots, leaving the portal business to others. Second, it diversified its B2B revenue model with early entry into the lucrative enterprise search software market. Lastly, it focused on cost-cutting and streamlining operations to "right-size" the business.

AltaVista now operates two primary business units, AltaVista Internet and AltaVista Software, described below.

AltaVista Internet

• Altavista.com - Web-based consumer search, including multimedia search capabilities (images, audio files, and video files), translation services, news search and additional data resources
• Internet Search Services - Web-wide search capabilities for Internet sites
• Web Marketing Services - Trusted Feed, Express Inclusion, Listing Enhancements, etc.
• Advertising Programs - Highly effective methods of uniting advertisers with AltaVista users.

The paid inclusion programs have helped boost revenues. Smaller Web sites can add up to 500 pages at $39 for the first URL and progressively less for subsequent pages with Express Inclusion, which includes weekly updates for freshness.

Trusted Feed is for larger sites with over 500 pages. Some of AltaVista's Trusted Feed clients include eBay, Amazon, CDW, and Online Sports. This program is based on cost-per-click pricing, it includes weekly updates and can include custom titles, keywords and abstracts. Trusted Feed is particularly advantageous for Web pages traditionally difficult for crawlers to read. Both paid inclusion programs index dynamic content, resulting in expanded visibility for customers and deep Web content for users.

AltaVista Software

• This division develops and markets enterprise-grade search software enabling a business to catalog and rapidly access data across corporate networks such as intranets, extranets, databases and customer-facing Web sites. AltaVista has a range of clients from commerce sites like Amazon and Borders to government sites like the FBI and NASA.

While many have voiced the opinion that AltaVista is fading, its Software division has provided significant revenues over the past two years and has licensed information-access and data-retrieval software to more than 1,200 leading companies.

Big, Fresh and Friendly

AltaVista doubled the size of its index over the past year. It crawled and evaluated 4 billion pages and currently has a full-page index of over 600 million pages.

AltaVista also improved its news search, launched a comparison shopping search, and expanded search results to include additional digital resources and data (white and yellow-pages, blended stock quotes, images, maps, multimedia files, etc.). Freshness, as shown by the breakdown below, is taken quite seriously.

Content Type        Update Frequency
News Feeds             15 minutes
Basic Submit URLs    Ongoing
Multimedia Index      Partial update weekly
Index Build               Partial update weekly
Trusted Feed            Weekly
Express Inclusion     Weekly

To become more user-friendly, AltaVista continues to refine its relevancy algorithm, increase the size of its database, and improve its user interface. Going forward, AltaVista envisions truly user-centric Internet search and enterprise-grade information access and data retrieval technologies, which AltaVista Product Marketing Director Chris Kermoian calls "third-generation search."

Best of Breed Search

"AltaVista's goal is to deliver best-of-breed third-generation search," explained Kermoian. First generation search basically ranked sites based on page content. Ranking factors included such items as word count, page title, and location of text on a page. 

Second generation search added ranking components from other information on the web, focusing on factors such as link analysis and anchor text from related Web pages.

Third generation search will go beyond the Web, taking additional factors into account such as contextual understanding, personal relevance, and semantic understanding. "The challenge will be to focus on the user need, not simply the search query," said Kermoian. "Effective search engines will be able to recognize information about the user, understand the user's query, and search an extremely broad range of data sources to provide an answer that is personally relevant."

Top Listings

I couldn't resist asking Kermoian about top listings."Your best bet is to ensure that your content is valuable and properly presented. Developing proper meta-tags is important," he revealed. AltaVista's formula makes use of titles, descriptions, and keywords. "Choose keywords that target specific queries related to your page content," said Kermoian. That means if your site is about tennis, your meta-tags and site content should reflect this.

Kermoian continued, "We aggressively remove spam - pages intended to artificially boost ranking - from our index." Therefore, sites created specifically for search engine robots should be avoided. AltaVista will index doorway pages only if used as a navigational aid to the rest of the site (like BMW.com), and will not condone doorway spam pages. Kermoian gives us a good rule of thumb: "If a site has one doorway page that helps direct users to quality content within, that's acceptable. But creating multiple doorway pages that send the user to the exact same site is clearly spamming."

What About XML?

We've all heard stories about XML replacing HTML. AltaVista doesn't believe it will happen in the near future (4-5 years) because HTML remains so prevalent. "If XML becomes pervasive, AltaVista is prepared," asserted Kermoian. "We currently use XML extensively in our Internet Search Services program (providing search capabilities for other Internet sites) and the Trusted Feed program (receiving representations of Web pages from paid inclusion customers), as well as many data interchanges with partners."

Can AltaVista regain its luster? It has many loyal users and is often cited as a source by librarians. It also has well-crafted plans for the Internet and software divisions, with a two-year head start in the enterprise software business (Google and Lycos recently joined the fray). I'd say it's poised to persevere and prosper.