AltaVista Selling out Ranking

[Vishal]

Not sure if this is old or new, but haven't read it here so thought will post it.

I am sure we all are aware that AltaVista has been showing listing from GoTo.com as "Partner Listings", however, it will be new for many users to know that AltaVista is also selling out listing [or may be they are having a totally seperate SE for my IP] under "Featured Site"

I just used the key phrase "search engine positioning" [without quotes] and First Web site is listed under "Featured Site" and Second and thrird under "Partner Listings" and rest results under "We found xxxxxxxresults:"

Well, I am not sure if most surfers will like this paid ranking - this might only degrade AV's reputation.

[awoyo]

I hate to say it, but AV's reputation went south with me a long time ago. The first spot of trouble was when one of my sites was banned for being on a links page. Took me months to get back in the index. Next was another one of our sites coming up in the number three spot for our KW's but AV was pointing the link to altogether another company. The fix for the problem was to take the site completely out of the index. Now, after six months of sweating, I finally have another site listed in a number one spot for popular keywords and get only about a hit or two a week from AV. I'm getting 30-40 hits a day from Google for the same spot/keywords/etc.... Heck, I got more traffic from Google when the site was in the number 6 spot than I did with it AV's number 1 spot.
Cheap Pop-ups, adult returns for non adult queries, and all of the above leave me, and I would guess a lot of others, with a bad taste in their mouths for AV.

[grnidone]

AV lost me when they tried to be the "do it all portal site" back in 1999.

-G

[Brett_Tabke]

We hit on it a bit Vishal in June (a few responses down in the thread):
[webmasterworld.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

>>Cheap Pop-ups...etc<<

I sent an email to AV about what I thought was a particularly cheap trick about a month ago, and the response I got back was a little bit sad, to the effect that "we've got to make money somehow." I remember when AV was the academic search engine, in much the same way that Google is now. The problem is that no one's figured out a good revenue model....