Remember Altavista.com ?

Once, they where the google of the time .. now ?! well .. erm, they still are alive.

And guess what, I rank #1 for a very popular keyword and they are giving traffic back! not much compared to G, Y! and msn, but still, traffic is traffic.

I haven't seen altavista referres pop up in my logs before

just wanted to share, never ranked #1 for a popular keyword before on any SE

 

i still use altavista from time to time for stuff and I use them in some sites even for calculating backlinks or indexed pages.

 

Oh yeah, I remember altavista.com alright...

I remember sitting in a lab, getting pissed off at typing in exactly that (altavista.com) when it should have been altavista.digital.com

I also remember thinking I'm gonna register that damn (back then they were free) domain and GIVE it to them so others don't have so much trouble finding their fav SE.

I also remember KICKING myself when it was later sold to them for 3M.

Yeah, I remember..

Cheers,

JL

 

sorry john for starting this thread and bringing back memories like that ... the first time I visited altavista.digital.com, the altavisa.com (and av.com) domain was already registered...

 

Heh, not to worry, it's always good to reflect from time to time.. besides, it taught me a valuable lesson that was well worth learning

Cheers, and Merry Xmas BTW

JL

 

You sure it was not already registered? A friend of mine owns the ISP that it was hosted at. I remember he was saying it was getting an insane amount of typeins, so much so that it basically was turned into a parking page, and the owner made a ton off ads, maybe one of the first.

 

This *was* early days.. but hey, I didn't exactly pursue it to earths end either so I can't say with 100% certainty that it was available to me. As far as i recall it was, but it's history either way, and retrospectively a simple lesson learned

Besides, I've seen other equally lucrative opportunities (if not more so) pass me by because i couldn't be bothered pursuing them.. as have a lot of people.

That's the net though.

Cheers,

JL

 

hrmm I wish altavista had a api... I would like a 4th set of results for stuff and scraping them works but its so... ehh unethical

 

So do you have some experiences to improve your rank in altavista

 

I am #1 , so I guess I did some things right... but I never monitor my results on altavista so I don't know what makes them tickle.

For the same keywords I rank #2 on msn, #10 on Yahoo and #90+ on Google.

but don't spend to much time on altavista: being #2 on msn brings me a lot of visitors every day, being #1 on Altavista has given me 1 user in a month! just 1!

 

AltaVista is owned by Yahoo and may go out of business.

 

Man, I completely missed that. Altavista IS owned by yahoo... must have happened when I was on holiday, or Altavista is just not news anymore where I live... thanks searchguru!

 

Are you being sarcastic?

 

Nope, really missed the "Yahoo buys Altavista" news -- can't read all the news...
English is not my native language, so if I sounded sarcastic it was because of bad translation. sorry!

 

Yahoo bought AV and AlltheWeb several years ago and now supply most of their results.

 

I uses altavista after Google only ..mostly for searching audio and video

Wasn't aware of this that yahoo has bought altavista.

 

probably because it isn't "Sexy" anymore... sometime it was, now google is, someday another site will be

 

BTW they are now mirror fo Yahoo! results.

 

but don't spend to much time on altavista: being #2 on msn brings me a lot of visitors every day, being #1 on Altavista has given me 1 user in a month! just 1!

LOL yo man thats really not fair, actually i would have said its impossible but with the time goes by... its actually true im sure. This is useless to concentrate yourself on Altavista. the only one you should focus on is Google and yahoo

 

No doubt, but I for myself am also glad I don't jump on things like that. Sure, I kick myself later, too ... But were I to jump on every opportunity (because I'd have to jump on hundreds to be sure), I'd waste as much money as I'd earn in the end.

You never can tell with these things, that's for sure... Many a big domain name has earned a lot of money, and that many more lost out hard, too.

In the case of Altavista, in the end they lost pretty hard, if you ask me. But yeah, it would've been nice to cash in on the domain name... Then again, the whole cyber-squatting thing leaves me cold, but that's just me.