AltaVista

Turn around time

[Chris Burgess]

Hi anyone know how long it takes to have a site submitted with Alta Vista? Or how do you figure out that it may not have been accepted?
Chris

[markd]

Hi Sugarkane

In my example it is pages under a .com domain that are indexed by not 'ranked'.

I understand that AV.com will often filter out .co.uk domains.

Mark

[angiolo]

Hi!

It seems that Altavista gives higher ranking to old submitted pages.

We have two different sites (from two different companies) targeted for the same keywords and having a similar HTML structure (keywords density, links, link popularity etc.).

They were in the top positions for the targeted keywords.

We did some slight changes in the main page of one site. That main page disappeared during the Altavista reindexing (tha main index, not the other pages). We wrote to Altavista and they suggest to resubmit that page. We resubmitted the page, but it is not ranking so fine: what it is strange is that other pages of thet site are ranking better than ever for targeted keywords they are not optimized for! It seems that Altavista is ranking the "theme" of the site and some pages rank better than other just only because the targeted keywords are only in in the META KEYWORDS tag.

Angiolo

[Cees]

My new site, not ranking, is regional .co.nz

I just checked on altavista.co.nz (search New Zealand, not world wide)

#1 out of 68695
#2 out of 17461

I must be doing something right

[spiky]

They are .co.uk sites

a .net site isn't showing at all

[Robert Charlton]

>>No evidence that the ODP listing, which was submitted at the same time, has had any effect.<<

The ODP listing appeared in AV's "index" today. It's ranking #1. :)

[mr_dredd]

mark-d -> same here - lots of indexed pages from their last big update and none have been showing anywhere - it's not a case of bad ranking, and the pages are there but absolutely nowhere to be seen in serps. I've had this before, and the pages which this happened to have, after a while actually started showing up good on their respective keywords. MAkes me think that somehow there is a lag between inclusion in their index and those pages taking part in search results.
Anyone else had this?

[makemetop]

Anyone else noticed the astounding speed in which new pages are showing up? I submitted 5 pages of a brand new site (domain only bought on Monday) to AV (UK and US) on Wednesday 4th 4.00pm GMT and paid PT at the same time for the same pages. First referal came from AV US on Thursday 5th at 7pm GMT and next from AV UK at 11pm Thursday. First listed in Inktomi at 8am GMT today (Friday). This is amazing speed! Results came up in lower half of second page on AV - in top 5 on Ink but I'm still stunned by the speed of turnaround.

[markd]

I have always found a generic 'Inktomi' flavoured page does well in AV.co.uk, but .com has slightly different tastes.

I haven't detected any change in AV's requirements, but I am wondering if I have missed a trick because my pages are nowhere in the latest search results.

Also, are you using the max. 5 URL's at a time in AV.com or sticking to one a day to achieve such great results?

Good to hear that your pages are both being indexed and ranked really quickly!

[spiky]

The coded 5 URL at a time option has not been offerred on Alta UK for a while.

It no linger offers automatic option for Alta.com either

These changes occurred some time last week.

[markd]

Further to my recent posts on being 'indexed' but not 'ranked', my pages are now ranking well but only if you conducts an exact search - using "keyphrase".

Does this mean that my pages are simply not optimised well enought to rank in an AV.com non-exact search, or the keyphrase is competitive (wouldn't have thought so as they are niche phrases)?

Sorry in advance if this is a 'newbie' question - any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Robert Charlton]

Mark,

Of the "new" sites I have that are indexed but not ranked in AV, they're both ranking #1 in Fast and Google, which, in my experience, suggests they should do well on AV. One is a redo of an old site, so it already has a bunch of links that show in an AltaVista link:url search. Yet neither ranks on AV right now for anything except essentially its domain name.

Furthermore, when I run searches on very specific phrases, the AV results I'm getting are pretty much nonsense. When I include "San Francisco" as a modifier, for example, the first result is a Washington DC specific cite.

All of which is to say that something isn't quite settled at AV, and that you certainly shouldn't be judging your optimizing abilities by AV results right now.

[makemetop]

markd

>...Also, are you using the max. 5 URL's at a time in AV.com or sticking to one a day...?

I used the 5 url option for the one domain on AV US and submitted just the home page to AV UK. The pages are optimised for Ink which, I find, will usually work as they rise through age on AV.

[spiky]

Alta uses a quite complex algorithm to decide in which order to return search results.

Alta gives a higher score to more unique and unusual words, this may explain some unusual results if phrases are searched on without using "key phrase" or "key+phrase" searches

Try repeating your search using these methods

Alta rates key word/phrase density in the top part of the page. META's are important in adding a few extra invisable key words.

They say the index should repond to "tweaks" in 48 to 72 hours, so try submitting revised pages and see the results, but remember Alta is only One SE and seems to be using very different Algorithms to most of the others at this time... So optimisation for Alta may not reward you in the other SE's