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

[spiky]

Hi Chris

We recently put a new site onto Alta, and from submitting in Jan 10th the first appearance took to March 17th (Alta UK)

We also opted in to the USA submission, and it hasn't appeared yet.

Hope this helps

From WMW home page follow the links to local Australian info on Alta and other SE's

[Marcia]

Here's the link to the forum for Asia and Pacific region search engines [webmasterworld.com].

Chris_Burgess, if it's appearing by search by URL, it's in there - but whether it comes up under a keyword search is a different story.

A lot depends on how competitive the terms are (which is why we study optimization).

Alta has changed considerably since December, and there's no definite pattern to how soon sites are added.

[FreeBee]

Chris - agree with Marcia's "no definite pattern". We've had some good results though, on one site submissions via AVUK (following onto AV.com) on 21 Feb, indexed and ranked on 23 Feb by AVUK, listed by AV.com around 12 March! Others don't seem to have made any progress since early February.

[Chris Burgess]

Further to my topic.

Thanks for the comments. The bit that I don't understand is that when I take an excerpt from my site and put it in inverted commas eg "Don't be shy, just be your sensual self and enter" my site should come up number one as an exact match but it doesn't. Similarly other exact matches to my site do not appear. Does this mean it has not been spidered properly?

[Marcia]

>Does this mean it has not been spidered properly?

Chris, if it is in there at all, then at least part has been spidered. Did you submit all the pages,or just the index page? Is your site definitely coming up by search for the URL?

Remember that you are playing in a very competitive field, and there could be many factors involved, not the least of which is how well optimized the sites of the competition are. In your case, I'd say you are up against some heavy competition.

First thing to do is re-check your pages, and how you have your code and meta tags done. There was a bit of a response to your question in the keywords forum. Then, if you haven't submitted all of your pages, go ahead and do so. No more than 5 page per day. How long ago did you submit?

[perkins]

The way I check to see if my pages are in Alta is by putting "url:your url goes here" in the search box. Alta may not be putting your page on top because it is giving a lot if irrelevant results for a lot of searches.

[sugarkane]

There's definitely something going on here though. A url: check on a few of my domains shows plenty of pages, yet they are literally *nowhere* in the search results (and I'm talking refining the search until only 400 results are returned, yet I'm not in the top 200).

Now I'm not the greatest SEO of all time ;) but I've seen this effect on a site that was #2 out of 130,000 on a one word search for nearly a year.

The thing that's making me wonder is that all these sites are .co.uk and well ranked in AV UK. My .coms which are nowhere in AV UK are doing fine in av.com.

Am I in a 'one or the other, but not both' type situation?

[markd]

I am finding this also Sugarkane.

Search for one of my domains and up comes my index and a couple of content optimised pages. Click the 'more from this site' links and lo and behold, there are ALL of my content optimised pages.
However they are nowhere on a keyphrase search - even using an exact match. Funny thing is, the keyphrases I'm targeting are really 'specialised' and not at all competitive. Like you, I don't count myself as an 'expert' SEO, but what I am doing for these pages have got me top 5's in AV in the past (and still there for other domains).

I am seeing that the URL's are appearing 'truncated'and thought that they may be too long and therefore not showing up when the keyphrase is searched. But Brett kindly guided me as to a maximum number of characters that AV is thought to allow and they were within limits.

Don't really know what to do next: tweak, shorten the URL and resubmit?

Would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks

[NFFC]

>Would appreciate any suggestions

I'd just wait.

They are either penalising the free submits¹ or more likely it is simply a question of the pages being too new. In any engine that uses off the page criteria there will be an inevitable delay before new pages can be ranked, they need time to calculate your "place" in the collection of documents.

¹Until we see what delights webmaster.altavista.com holds in store this is pure speculation

[Robert Charlton]

I submitted a domain on 3/20/01, and found it was listed by 3/22/01... I'm guessing because their submission load is way down since the ransom note submission codes... but only the home page was in.

But I also am noticing that the site isn't ranking... even on exact matches. Was worried, thinking I'd completely lost it, until I saw my rankings on Fast this morning. So there is something going on.

I also thought that it might be a submission penalty, though I'd think with the submission codes that they shouldn't need one.

The other possibility is that they're indexing what's submitted but they haven't yet spidered the site. I don't maintain the site so I can't check logs.

Submitted my ODP listing yesterday, hoping that might speed things up....

[numediagirl]

Honestly AltaVista is in transition and doesn't know which end is up. Like it has been said before JUST WAIT. I'm not sure if you have noticed but everytime you submit to LYCOS it says "We sucessfully spidered your page [yoursiteURL.com"...] I believe that the same is true for ALTA VISTA. They are taking it one step further though. They are indexing the root URL as well as just crawling through the site. The algorythmns will determine the relevancy of your site when "IT" gets around to it. Tit for Tat... I guess now you are indexed almost immediately... but you still won't rank for a while - JUST WAIT.

PS FAST is incredible at indexing and determining your new sites ranking capabilities. However until Lycos goes fully wiuth FAST.no as their database the rankings mean @#$% cause no one uses FAST...

[Marcia]

Lycos really is spidering instantaneously. Last time I submitted I went right to the logs and sure enough - but just looked for robots.txt and the index page, which was all I submitted. Lycos is right on it, but I personally haven't seen that with AV.

Alta has obviously been making some major changes. There's been a total unpredictability since that mess back in December with all those strange sites appearing all over the place.

And incidentally, I've seen scooter 1 and 2, but 3 is new to me.

[rencke]

> no one uses FAST...

Ahem... [webmasterworld.com]

[numediagirl]

you knew what I meant although my sites are getting more and more referrers from FAST.no they still are on the bottom of my referrer lists the other engines that use fast are giving me great referrals but... they still are not a GOOGLE or and ALTA VISTA

[Brett_Tabke]

A few weeks ago, lycos and sympatico were our top referrer. (and trust, we have _good_ rankings at other engines) That sympatico campaign was incredible under certain kw categories.

[lizzie]

Regarding ranking in Alta Vista, I'm wondering
if how many links AV finds to your site has a huge part in the ranking it gives your pages?

[FreeBee]

hmm...was going to suggest a check on "related links" but it's not working from here right now(UK)....

[Jill]

We surprisingly got some pages listed in less than 2 weeks in AV! Then just to make a liar out of me when I checked just now it looks like they're back to an older database or dumped our newly added sites. We have nothing dated after July 2000 - except those few dated somewhere around 2006!

Jill

[JamesR]

Pages submitted on 3/23 showing up today, that is fast. I also submitted 21 pages to them on that day and they are in.

[Vann]

JamesR, when you say your sites are already in, do you mean just indexed or already ranked as well?? I thought there was a lag between indexing and ranking...may be a silly question, but I'm new at this game.

[Cees]

I was going to start a new Discussion but looking through this one I think my question relates to some of the discussion here.
Could one of the 'veterans' give me a definitive answer:
Is there a time delay between 'being spidered' and 'being indexed'?

I submitted 5 pages of new site last week, the were promptly spidered, I can find them by url: and by "very specific phrase" but not by keyword. And yes I know , competition, optimization etc. The kw's are not all that competetive I think and I sort off optimized. Should I wait or did mess-up on my pages somewhere?
I'm getting visions of another Inktomi...

[mivox]

Is there a time delay between 'being spidered' and 'being indexed'?

Yes. It can be months before you're spidered, or there can be months between the spider's visit and the actual updating of the index... or it can be less than a week from submission to indexing. This is one of the questions we'd all LOVE to have a definite answer for... but nobody's got one.

However, if your site can be found by URL or Title in the search engine's results, you *have* been indexed...

[Cees]

Thanks mivox
>However, if your site can be found by URL or Title in the search engine's results, you *have* been indexed...

Perhaps I should add a 3rd term to this, 'ranking'. I know site was indexed, what about ranking??(that was actually what I meant with my question in the first place).

The pages were also submitted to fast and It's ranking for several keywordphrases (and single words) in the first 10. (#2 out of 2*10^6 on one) so the pages are ok.
Is there a delay between being indexed and ranking?? If not then what else does altavista require?? links (I know they help but how much)???

Anyone with a altavista-algo-101 tutorial they wish to share?

Cees

[seth_wilde]

If your indexed your ranked, It's just a matter of how deep. Link popularity is important but your also going to have to get the proper keyword weights throughout the site. Try to work in your most important keywords on as many pages as possible and vary these weights on everypage.

for more detailed info try a WebmasterWorld site search [searchengineworld.com] for phrases like "themes", "link popularity" or "av keyword weight".

[Robert Charlton]

>>>>Perhaps I should add a 3rd term to this, 'ranking'.<<<<
>>If your indexed your ranked...<<

Seth - I'm with Cees on this one... there's something unusual going on. I have a new site appearing on all the engines that's a no brainer for the top 10.

The site appeared in AV two days after it was submitted, but only the index page was in. Since, for whatever reason, AV hadn't spidered the rest of the site, I decided to submit another page, along with its ODP listing. The second page took longer to appear... almost two weeks, but still the site doesn't show up on anything but highly specific searches for the company name. No evidence that the ODP listing, which was submitted at the same time, has had any effect. The site is showing up in the top 10 as it appears everywhere else.

Your comment that "it's just a matter of how deep" might be relevant here... maybe it takes AV longer than Google, say, to factor in link relevancy, etc... and maybe they won't even deep crawl until they see outside links. I think that's what this discussion is trying to figure out. Understanding that "a watched pot never boils" and all that, I've learned over the years to be patient... but I think you can also learn something about the algo by studying how results emerge.

I haven't seen Cees's site, and even though he's asking for an AV-algo-101 tutorial, I wouldn't automatically assume his site isn't well optimized.

[Cees]

>I haven't seen Cees's site, and even though he's asking for
>an AV-algo-101 tutorial, I wouldn't automatically assume his
>site isn't well optimized.

Robert, thank you for that comment.
I'm fairly new at this but not a total novice and not totally stupid. I learned heaps from webmasterworld in the past, managed to get other sites ranking well on many searchengines. This new site ranks well on fast/alltheweb as I said. I just can't get a handle on AltaVista.

With previous sites (only a few, still a hobby) I managed to get at least in top 50 in AltaVista. With this new site I'm absolutely nowhere. Hence my question, a) what's up with Alta these days and b) yes I need/want to learn more about Alta algo.
Cees

[markd]

Just to endorse some of the comments of colleagues who are 'indexed, listed' but not 'ranked'.

As per my earlier post, I am targeting extremely 'niche' keywords and have found that my index page is returned in a keyword search for the domain, and when I click the 'more from this site' my content optimised keyword pages are all there. However on a keyword search for these phrases my pages are literally nowhere.

I have been fortunate to get top 10 - 25 postions optimising pages for AV, and have used the same optimisation for these pages, but just cannot get them to 'rank'.

Sorry I have no answers, but I just wanted to say that I also think that something strange is going on.

I am going to drastically tweak these pages and resubmit using the new add URL feature. Will keep you posted if I get anywhere!

Great posts, great forum.

Mark

[spiky]

I don't think Linkage is currently highly relevent for alta, Our totally un-linked optimised page is way above our linked master index which is 1 in Google,fast,etc for its key phrase.

It seems keyword/phrase density in the first 100-150 words is currently the most important factor for ranking with 7-8% being about right.

Best I can manage on this is 17th, so there is something else of importance.

Has any one asked them directly recently ?

[sugarkane]

Are the sites that are indexed but unranked regional domains by any chance? I've not been able to get any .co.uk domains ranked in AV recently, but all my .coms are doing fine.

And just to clarify, my .co.uks are *really* not ranking, not just badly optimised - eg not in the first 200 for a precise search that only returns a thousand or so results...