Wow

[mark_roach]

Try this search [search.uk.altavista.com] on AV UK.

They are now returning pictures next to the listings.

First thoughts are WOW !

I know which listings I would check out first if I was a surfer. Can't quite workout what criteria they use to decide whether to display a picture or not.

Also are there any copyright issues here ?

[Brett_Tabke]

Sure there is a copyright issue on it. No different than the Google cache.

Btw: check out the home page there in the UK...33images on the homepage...wow.

[dogboy]

I wish I sold bandwidth

[jeremy goodrich]

Is the save to my search feature new, or just new to me?

[astein]

Some time ago I saw a German search engine that displayed a preview of the whole page - I think that's more useful than a random picture. Unfortunately I couldn't find it right now. (But I found another one [softlook.de].)

[jimmykav]

This is kinda like the twirlix.com preview feature. but i think they only show an image of the top level page.

[engine]

I can't quite fathom why it has selected those particular pictures to display.
It's not the only picture on some of the pages: Perhaps the first image it has come across?
They also tend to be later file dates, so, I wonder if these are the most recently spidered pages for the spider that came looking for images.

[vis]

Wow, indeed.

This seems to be a major challenge to the SEO community esp. if it is likely that this rolls over to AV.Com. (btw it doesn't operate on the 'worldwide' option on AVUK so it is only functional on the non-US database any word on the world AVs?)

How does AV choose which picture to display, which site to display a picture from. It seems to me that the average surfer is going to click on the one with the picture wherever there is one (its not restricted to 'soft' searches either- try gambling.)

In the first posting the picture chosen is neither at the top of the page, nor the smallest or largest by file size or dimensions nor is it the first alphabetically. Nothing noticeable in the Alt tag either. A lot more research is needed.

I've looked in the image search a few times and noticed to try and work out which pictures AV indexes and which it doesn't. I gave up because it never seemed that important.

[luckynh]

Try Viewing the image
It goes here
[212.187.226.60:80...]

Then Hit reload a few times it will change each time

inetnum: 212.187.226.0 - 212.187.227.255
netname: ALTAVISTA-EU
descr: Altavista
descr: London
country: US

[luckynh]

When I search for weimaraner breeders [search.uk.altavista.com] in the images tab on the AV UK

and view the image it goes here:
[thumb-1.image.altavista.com...]

But the same search on AV internation returns the same results
weimaraner breeders [web.altavista.com]

It lookes like these are off the main AV site

[chuck]

i saw a similar idea that provides a visual preview of all listings from search engines.
girafa.com is providing this great solution as a free download client application and they also provide their technology to search engines.
i wish AV would adopt their solution... if they would i would definetely start using them instead of google...

[Brett_Tabke]

Meanwhile in the us AV, they have went to those SkyScrapper banner ads too.

[jeremy goodrich]

Is it just me, or have they even lost some of their advertisers?

Before I could search on 'cars' and bring up this ugly drop down thing on the side of the search results. Now its not there, so I'm thinking their revenue projections are even bleaker than before. Sort of gives credibility to the rumor they are up for sale that was circulating.

[oldtimer]

>I wonder if these are the most recently spidered pages for the spider that came looking for images.

No, they aren't

Take a look at this one [search.uk.altavista.com]

I know the first few domains have been at the top for some time, one has 2 pages in with pics. One is a new site and the 2nd picture of the 2 has been selected.

[mark_roach]

Slighty off-topic but results 2 and 5 show that AV uk doesn't give a monkeys about duplicate pages.

[mivox]

AV uk doesn't give a monkeys about duplicate pages.

It's not just AV UK. :) I've *tried* notifying AV.com about out-of-date/duplicate listings of pages on my website (Listing one shows 'old' title, listing 2 shows 'new' title... same page/same content), and they've done nothing to delete the old versions.

Has anyone figure out yet how they choose which images to show? That's terrifically interesting.

[jimmykav]

My impressions of image selection:

button size images seem to be ignored e.g. approx 32x32 or smaller.

graphics that look similar to banners or ads are ignored e.e. wide and thin.

images that are thall and thin are ignored.

images that are roughly 200x200 seem to be candidates