Any high ranking new submissions?

since the intro of the submission code

[Moby1]

I've been doing searches on [uk.altavista.com...] to get an ideo of when top ranking pages in av were submitted. I'm using the date that says "last modified." I haven't found any newer than early February ranking well.

I have two questions - (1)Is that actually the date the page was spidered or the last time it was modified prior to being spidered? That may seem like a stupid question but the pages on my server don't give a last modified date in the header and av has the date as the spider date. (2)Does anyone have well ranked pages (top10) on two word phrases (or one word) since the change to submission codes?

[Moby1]

some pages have a last modified date as 2006 and 2007, so it must be reading the header and putting that date but if there isn't one using the date spidered.

Is 2006 listing just a matter of changing the date on the server? Does it help rankings at all?

[Moby1]

This question is being ignored by most of you, but I feel it is very relevant to this website. When I got started in this business 3 years ago, I was able to enjoy a great deal of success with infoseek. After submitting a URL, you would be spidered and in the db in about 10 minutes. Then last year, I did very well getting good listings in inktomi using canada.com and anzwers. I think we could all have similar success with AV and its new submission code. The turnaround time is better than anything I've seen in a while. I'm currently running a few test submissions and I will let the board know the results, but in the mean time does anyone have any recent success stories with av since the submission code?

Edited by: Moby1

[vis]

There is an ongoing discussion about whether the new pages entered into Altavista are ranking well or not here [webmasterworld.com]

There is a nagging suspicion that these newly added pages aren't ranking as well as they should and that Altavista may have implemented a penalty for submission like the Inktomi one.

Regarding the modified date, pages submitted to Altavista recently seem to have the spidered date on them as opposed to the last modified date which is normally displayed. Just anecdotal evidence- hell knows where the 2006,2007 comes in.

Also recent changes in spidering haven't affected AVUK yet (separate database), although it was always pretty fast at spidering anyway.

[4eyes]

Yeah - hardly any of my recent sites are getting good ranking.

I have an older site which is number one for a very popular motorcycle phrase, I use the same stats and techniques on my new sites.
As I don't use cloaking, I would normally expect my older site to lose its top spot as others 'snipe' at it.

This time it has stayed at number one for at least two months.

Its possble that AV has factored in some kind of age weighting. If the ranking was weighted using some kind of sliding scale for age it would make it very difficult for SEOs, which might be their plan!

I guess we will all find out in a few months time.

Anyone got info to support or contradict this theory?

[ulstrup]

age is quite important in AV and has been for several years. I've never figured out how long time is needed, but sometimes I see a bunch of pages move upwards for no reason, all having same dates, so I'm quite sure it goes like young, mature, old, vintage etc.

[4eyes]

that figures.

I guess they may recently have tweaked it a little to increase the bias for older pages.

Ah well - while AV plays the weighting game we all have to play the waiting game (sorry!)

[Bates]

we've got two sites that rank #1 and #2 for very competitive kws..

They rank well for other relevant kw that weren't targeted too..

At first, it wasn't cloaked.. and other sites started to appear that clearly was 'borrowing' our titles and more...

Our pages have been ranking well for a couple of months now.. and the 'copies' havent overtaken it yet.. (touch wood)

IMHO i reckon age as well as that other factor which no one has proved or disproved is always on my mind.. age and better ranking for a variety of relevant terms helps one's rankings a lot.

[backus]

Do a search for corporate housing in Detroit and take a look at position 1 and 6. Now with those sort of results, I think it is safe to say that AV is dying. I really don't know what to do to promote a page there, it really doesn't make any sense.

[mr_dredd]

i've subbed about 200 page since the new sub page and 99% are NOWHERE in ranking. It's not a optimisation thing - they are just not there AT ALL in results, although they all show in url:www.domain.com

I've noticed this before. A domain is included, but not active in results for a good while, then suddenly top 10-20 listings occur for them.

If it's an age thing, then it's a very funny age thing in that suddenly a page goes from NOWHERE to top 10 or 20.

Is this just me? My pages usually do well in the end.. Moby, you are right i think - there is an unusual queit about this.. is it just me????????? (paranoia)

[awoyo]

One of the pages I submitted on 3/7/01 was indexed quickly and ranked in at a paltry #75 - I just checked today and it's moved up to #24. Not great, but at least it's going in the right direction.

Something I just noticed that's a bit strange... I'm working on an extremely over used four-word-phrase and noticed that a company selling domain names has multiple, (and I mean a *lot* of 'em) duplicate pages in AV's index. There is nothing different about these pages except the URL. The pages are generic templates that advertise that the domain name the page is located at is for sale. Everything about the page is a dupe. Size, date submitted, title, description, keywords, etc.... Everything! So much for AV's attempt to alleviate spam?

Jim

[Robert Charlton]

I'm noticing that just about everything is wrong with AV right now... Not just that my beautifully optimized pages aren't ranking :)... Search results, as many others have noticed, are absolutely awful, and AV seems to be offering up hidden browser windows with an ad whenever I log on. It seems what they had, which was once very fine, is crumbling, probably for financial reasons. Are non-SEOs, I wonder, noticing the deterioration too?

[mr_dredd]

i wonder if this has anything to do with where you submit from? I mean,I know we all submit from the same page, but would that submission go to the same server ? etc?

[backus]

What I want to know is, with the bad results, and with it being obvious it is not possible to promote in AV, should we continue to try? I have it on my list of top 8 SEs, and use it in my guarantee for customers, but if AV is giving out crazy results, then how can I keep my guarantee??? Should I go away from AV, if yes then what would you recommend?? My top 8 SEs:
AV, Fast, Netscape, AOL, Excite, Lycos, Google, Yahoo.

[rogerd]

Backus, I think it's too early to decide to dump AV completely. AV has had their screwed up periods in the past, and they have eventually gotten their act together. Currently, we see a few encouraging signs -improvements in indexing time and also quite a bit of spidering. It's mostly their algo that seems squirrely. At this point, I think "wait and see" is the best approach. Unfortunately, users do notice the decline in results quality, and to me a slide in popularity (like the one Excite experienced and that AV profited from) has already begun.