Hands up those with new pages appearing in AV's index recently.

[engine]

I've not seen much turning up, even though the spidering has been frequent. The results are not even buried, they are just not getting in. Could this be the way to force sites to pay for listing?
Hands up those with new pages appearing in AV's index recently?

[skibum]

We submited a bunch of pages immediately before and after the Paid Inclusion program. After about 6 weeks those pages showed up. Subsequent submissions have not been showing up at all.

Traffic from top rankings in AV is plummeting so I guess its not a big deal.

[pete]

"Could this be the way to force sites to pay for listing?"

I think that this is exactly what it is. I have had no joy in the last 6 - 8 weeks and have been submitting regularly via the free submission route.

Nothing! Was suprised to see posters in this thread ( [searchengineforums.com...] )state that they have been getting pages in.

Another thread - same topic:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[jeremy goodrich]

I haven't got anything into their db since July. And I've been trying...the next time scooter comes round, I'm seriously considering putting it into my .htaccess file. I don't need that kind of abuse.

[caine]

engine,

i see exactly what you mean, the site they are listing and the amount of pages is from the back end of july, early august

[Ove]

Hi
I dont get Av i am in and i am out and and out and gone
but i see some sites that have a good ranking they also get very much traffic from Av
(Swedish sites)

/Ove

[FreeBee]

engine, I assume you've followed through on an older thread [webmasterworld.com] re AV following links?

The last successes we had were subs on 20/21 June which appeared around 2 August. (By the way, these were free submits - I'm not considering pay route.)

[agerhart]

I honestly can't complain with AV's results.......their referrals are another story

[engine]

I'm trying to find someone out there with new sites appearing in the index. Clearly, there are many of us waiting for ransom note success.

On another point despite regular spidering, I've not yet seen old sites, already in the index, having been updated.

Can we conclude that only paid listings are getting in? I'm not sure that is the case either.

[agerhart]

I just checked one of our newer sites that we did not pay for inclusion....it is in there.

[Crazy_Fool]

i used the ransom note for one site (about 25 pages) from beginning of july onwards. i submitted 5 pages every monday.
each page submitted showed up about 6 weeks later, but searching for the site using the main keywords showed it wasn't appearing in the SERPS. i searched by the exact title and not even that showed up.
i checked again today and searching for the site by domain.com showed only 2 results. clicking show more pages from this site showed only the same 2 results. searching for url:domain.com showed 24 results. searching for the site by 4 words (company name + keywords) as found in the title of one page gave me 30,856 results. the site did not appear at all in those 30,000 results.
the same site hits 7th place on google for a search on the main double keyword and various other high places for other keyword combinations.
things might improve once the site has a few more links to it.

[rogerd]

Crazy_Fool, my results are somewhat similar. I submitted a handful of pages from a larger site in early August. I was encouraged when in the ensuing 8 weeks Scooter spidered a couple of hundred pages more than once. To date, however, only the submitted pages are listed. They are buried, too - can hardly find them even when searching for the company name.

[Rusky]

Hi All

I am in the process of putting a list of search engines together as a reference sheet for our clients concerning which se's we will be targeting for their campaigns.

My question is, are other people still offering Altavista to their clients, or do they insist that the clients pay.

Is it worth suggesting Altavista at all.

It is such a high profile site that most of the clients already know about it and want to appear there.

All comments welcome

Cheers

Rusky

[engine]

Hi Rusky, I would retain AV on my top list as it drives traffic.

I'd recommend AV on that basis, however, it would really depend upon the client's attitude to payment.

[Rusky]

Thanks engine that was quick !

So, only on a pay basis as you cannot trust the free entry to do what it says ?

[engine]

There is the challenge - if it drives traffic, then, it may be worth considering.
I cannot recommend any paid service that does not drive sufficent traffic (unless it is purely for "corporate" branding).

The standard submit page should work, otherwise, one might be forced to pay (or not). ;)

I thought i'd take longer to reply, this time - hehe

[Rusky]

Thanks Engine.

I was just going on what all of the previous posters had stated that basically the free submit was not working.

It is tricky to say to a client you will appear on Altavista and then go the normal free route, only for the submission to lay dormant with the client getting increasingly impatient, and you looking like a fool.

This is why I was thinking about the paid entry, so as to cut out the uncertainty, at least then I only have to rank, rather than worrying about inclusion.

It would not make economical sense for them to offer paid inclusion and then let people in for free.

I would not be surprised if the free submit was just to keep people pushing buttons, until they decide that they have had enough and go the paid route.

Bring back Infoseek and their two hour turn around !!!! :)

[engine]

>the client getting increasingly impatient,

Precisely. There are those that can wait and those that cannot.

Seems like we have to bear in mind that the International databases were also supposed to be integrated into one big DB. That could also be delaying things.

Otherwise, you've just about summed it up correctly.

>Bring back Infoseek and their two hour turn around

<hehe> - you are showing you've been in this arena for a relatively long time with that statement. </hehe>

[Crazy_Fool]

Well I'm going to try another route into AV ... I'm NOT going to submit via the ransom note.
I've put another small site online (6 pages) and linked into it from my main site which has several different scooter bots going through it at different times. With a bit of luck, scooter will go through the new site and make it available in SERPS.

[seth_wilde]

The last free listing that I've had show up were on Aug 24

[Robert Charlton]

>>I've put another small site online (6 pages) and linked into it from my main site which has several different scooter bots going through it at different times. With a bit of luck, scooter will go through the new site and make it available in SERPS.

I think this method is the one least likely to produce results. If you want to get in free, my experience suggests you should submit the pages you want indexed using the ransom note submission and wait a couple of months.

See Is AV following any links? [webmasterworld.com] thread.

[heini]

My hands are still down. Generally asking in Europe Iīm afraid only very few hands will go up.
Did some more searches in av.de and av.fr. From 10/10/01-16/10/01 no new pages from TLDs .de or .fr. searching for "die" and "le".
Either there are no submisions from France and Germany or they donīt show up in searches.
In Europe there is the additional problem of new pages appearing in the local index, see this thread: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum18/293.htm [webmasterworld.com]

(edited by: heini at 1:43 pm (gmt) on Oct. 16, 2001

[caine]

just had a look, still listing only pages from August update, though crawled recently harder than ever.

[Liane]

I have a number one and a number two listing on AV for two separate (and very good) four keyword phrases which produce excellent results from Google, MSN and AOL. I haven't had even one bite coming from AV.

I wouldn't bother with their paid listing programme. If you are right up there in the results for targeted traffic and don't see ANY traffic ... why bother?

[rogerd]

I concur with Robert - on a brand new site launched early in August, the only pages indexed are those manually submitted. Despite multiple exhaustive spiderings of the site that began shortly after launch, no other pages have been indexed.

At one point, it was generally thought that there was a rankings boost for pages that Scooter found on his own - hence, one was advised to submit minimally and let the rest get spidered. This strategy would appear to be out of the question, unless it becomes apparent that AV resumes adding the results of its spidering to their database.

[feeder]

If you look at the new metrics released by Jupiter (see here: [searchenginewatch.com...] AltaVista are still on a big decline.

Contrast this with Googles figures and their recent "reach out to webmasters" attitude. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see AV's future.

So why should we pay AV any money? It doesn't look like they will be around for long.

[littleman]

Just my opinion:
Another
Loosing
Traffic
Aggregator
Vesting
In
Sucking
Tangible
Assets

Seems they are following someone else's lead.

[backus]

I submitted to AV on Friday last, and yesterday Scooter was all over me like a cheap aftershave! Don't know what happened but it almost crashed our net!

[gethan]

Does anyone have any contacts in AV?

It might be worth getting them to take a look at this thread :)

They used to be responsive to emails ... but times have changed.

[conor]

We still recommend Altavista to our clients, but only via paid inclusion. The last figures I have as to AV's market share show it having something like 3.9% of SE traffic, thus we dont give it much importance and concentrate on google !! Does anyone have an up to date comprehensive list of SE Market share or is there a previos (recent)posting on the subject ?