Altavista crawling in earnest.

[Brett_Tabke]

I'd not watch for alta much lately, but I see they've been all over several sites the last day.

[vitaplease]

Same here for the last two weeks. In totals AltaVista was number one in spider visits for me this month!

Which makes me wonder: What referral rate % people still get who had their sites fully indexed/optimised within AV, before AV stopped their free submission (last may?).

[agerhart]

Alta has also been all over our site, and they have updated their database.

[Ove]

<and they have updated their database> paid sites?

They have missed all my pages then for mounths back.

I get crawled pretty hard but with no result

/Ove

[Michael Weir]

>>I get crawled pretty hard but with no result

hehe..that sounds funny.

I think AV is spidering more often. You get a slightly different message after submitting a site which leads me to believe there have been some changes. Still hate having to decipher those letters to submit though. :(

[bufferzone]

Scooter has been all over my site too, but no result in the DB yet, the SERP shows very old listings

[jeremy goodrich]

Yep, all over a few sites, which actually tells me how they are crawling 'new stuff' these days: the domain registration database.

The sites in question are not linked by anything, 'just there' and AV picked them up within a day of going live. I'm considering banning AV on this site too, because I don't honestly see the point.

They have even recrawled pages already, and none of it shows in their db...so why should I let them have my stuff?

I'll watch, just for curiosity. Last time I banned them on a site, it showed up a month later...perhaps that's the key to getting in? lol.

[minnapple]

Perhaps they are trying to build an database that is worth selling to others SEs.

Without this the InfoSpiders/Alta Inclusion program falls far behind the PositionTechs/Inktomi Inclusion program in terms of value.

Over the last six months I have purchased one InfoSpiders/Alta Inclusion page and I recently let it expire because of lack of return.

I have and will continue to purchase PositionTechs/Inktomi Inclusion program pages because they have a wide reach and offer the tools I need to increase their performance.

I question if the AltaVista's managment is under so much pressure to cut costs and generate short turn profits that their focus is not on formulating a inclusion model that delivers value to their clients.

I do however, wish them success.

[Crazy_Fool]

i've had hundreds and hundreds of hits from various AV spiders, but still no sign of anything showing in the AV index. each page seems to get hit 3 or 4 times a month, maybe more. AV is using my bandwidth and i receive no benefit whatsoever. bandwidth isn't really a problem, but i'll ban scooter to give me much smaller log files which will be easier to read.

[Marcia]

Going three directories deep, grabbing graphics. It's been quite a while since that happened.

[diddlydazz]

One of my sites in the AV index was 3 months old, and scooter was crawling heavily.

I resubmitted the index page and Hey Presto ! 2 days later the new site is in the index!

Anyone else tried this ?

Dazz

[tigger]

I'm seeing quite a bit of scooter to, but what is the importance of a good AV listing, in the past yes, but how many people use it now. After looking at a recent survey AV is not even in the top 10 in the UK, I don't know about worldwide

[Crazy_Fool]

I'm seeing quite a bit of scooter to, but what is the importance of a good AV listing, in the past yes, but how many people use it now. After looking at a recent survey AV is not even in the top 10 in the UK, I don't know about worldwide

the search engine world is constantly changing ... AV has a new man at the top (or somewhere near there) ... could AV strike deals with other engines? could AV begin heavily promoting itself to draw new users?

although i think AV is slowly dying, i'm always aware that things can change very quickly and AV might actually be worth something in a couple of months. until AV is totally dead i'll keep an eye on developments and i'll keep some sites open to scooter.

[WebGuerrilla]

We've also seen a ton of AV, and it has all been getting in very quickly. The same thing has been happening with Ink. I think both companies are discovering that you can't maintain a database people want to use if your only source of new sites comes from paid inclusion.

[SmallTime]

wild guess time: I like minneapple's fattening it up idea but put it together with their corporate search biz and IBM stuff - Is IBM the motivation behind the crawling? ie is IBM looking to put their version of smart tags [webmasterworld.com...] the altavista database [about.altavista.com...] and opera front end [webmasterworld.com...] together?

[keyplyr]

This is great. My pages have been returned to their #1 ranking from a year ago. Maybe this is an indication that AV is attempting to regain the relavancy it lost and hopefully it's market share. I don't feel comfortable with only one or two SE running the whole show.

[Crazy_Fool]

the only change i can see from the last time i looked is that altavista is now showing results from the google directory as well. is this a new thing or have i just never noticed it before???

so far i've seen directory.google.co.uk and directory.google.de, both with last modified dates of october 14th.

AV also lists the help pages from google such as www.google.com/help/basics.html (last modified date of december 30th.

[backus]

I just got 79 hits off Scooter in the last four days! Only to be beaten by Fast with 118. Madness! Utter madness!

[budterm]

> This is great. My pages have been returned to their #1 ranking from a year ago.

Same thing happened to me... with resulting very good traffic, so people are still going to AV! It lasted only a week, tho, and then dropped to #8.

Funny thing is, this site had been banned by AV (I think... never could confirm) about a year ago. It had been in the index for 5 years and then eliminated. I could not get it back in until I paid for inclusion... but it still did not have its old good rankings.

So, I just allowed the paid for inclusion to lapse, and bingo, there we were at #1! (I'm sure that was a coincidence, but I found it rather humourous).

[Ove]

I finally se an update on 2 of my pages.

Cant remember when i submit them but it was mounths ago.

/Ove

[IanTurner]

Hmm! Scooter has been busy, but is the crawling really the problem.

Alta needs to improve its SERPs presentation to retrieve those lost searchers.