Strange search results

Is it just me?

[jilly]

I am getting some very irrelevent search results for some keywords. If I'm not mistaken, and God knows I have been, it looks like AV either has up an old database or changed their algo. Many of our very old sites, circa 1997-1998 are showing up in the directory in top spots, while most of our newer submissions are buried. Is this SE thing contagious? ;)

[Billythekid]

I stopped using Alta for my personal searches because the results are useless. Last I heard they were having problems with their new database and would be reverting back to their old for a while.

[seth_wilde]

There was definitely a change to their results last week, haven't figured out all the details quite yet though.

[oscar]

Yep, I will confirm big change for us last week. We have been drifting down the ranking for the last three weeks but still in the top 10 mostly so we didn't worry about it.

Last week we tanked and most all listed pages have dropped below number 12. Oddly, some pages that were laying back about 50 spots have made big jumps and now are ranked close to the related pages that just moved down in rank.

This is after 4 months of pretty steady to 10's and 5's. I don't see any clues yet as to what the new scheme is with AV.

On the keyword "auction" the number two spot goes to a Korean language, auction community site, the number 7 spot goes to a Japanese language site and AV's shopping site has the number one spot(go figure).

No rhyme or reason from what I see. The Korean site has been creeping up for about 6 weeks now. Also, the link thing seems to be out the window for now as the Korean site has two links.

I guess this will give the world a view of some pretty obscure web sites though.