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I have checked a few of their European sites, where the old system is still in use. But where do the url:s end up? In the local or in the global index? In Sweden, it is clearly stated that they end up in the local index only and that you have to submit to Altavista.com if you want to be in the global index.
But Altavista in Denmark, Norway and Germany say no such thing. Does that mean that you can submit to them and still get into the global index? Or did they just forget to mention it? Let's help each other get a handle on the Altavista situation in Europe. Check your local add url page and post your findings here.
the new submission codes needed for Av is not on the french version.
At this url : [web.altavista.com ]
Altavista France ask your e-mail for helping you on submiting and drive traffic for your site.
I don't try this option, I'll try and let you the response I receive.
Laurent
However, they used to link to add URL at Av.com - now they don't. They give you the email option as well. Tried it a week ago, havent heard anything yet.
When you click that second submit button you are taken to the new system, where you have to enter the serial number and submit again.
No email options for the dutch AV I think.
At the search engine conference in London last February an AltaVista representative told us that you should only submit a web site to one of the local indexes. Because it will only remain in the last index submitted to. This dose not include the global .com index.
I have done some testing and found that it is true. A site indexed by AltaVista.se was kicked out after it was submitted and indexed by AltaVista.de.
They apparently do not use any language recognition, so a site in Swedish may as well be in the .de index.
Will it be shown under the option "Swedish sites"? That would indicate that one index handles all of Europe, and Altavista is not telling the whole story on their Swedish submission page. But in that case, how did you find out that it had been kicked out?
Interesting to see that the Swedish index have 4 pages indexed, and the Portuguese has 272. All in Swedish.
If you change from Swedish or Portuguese to international search, only one page remains in the index.
Theory: If you submit to more than one regional AV, they will drop anything they have in other regional AV:s, which will default to the global index, which will have next to nothing.
Here is Ted' search [altavista.com] in Altavista.com. 2 pages!
I think that the very least they should do, is to explain how all this hangs together in their addURL pages, which they don't.
So, a site in english and swedish sould only be submitted Av.com/se.
Submitting the swedish content to Av.it would cause a drop on Av.se?
Yes Rumbs, that’s what I was told by the Altavist man i London.
If you search for the same domain on a local engine but choose the international setting instead of the local, you get a slightly different result than if you use the .com version directly.
An international search on a local engine [search.se.altavista.com] as opposed to the search linkt by Rencke. One result instead of two. :) You go figure.
Yes, but where? Multilingual sites are the height of fashion in Europe. Has been since the web started. What good will a translation from English to Italian do, if Altavista UK is the only place that will index the site? The Italians are not going to use uk.altavista.com to find things. Or if you have to give up the listing in uk.altavista.com to get into it.altavista.com?
Ted has opened up a whole can of worms here. Is splitting multilingual sites into single language dot-coms the only possible solution? We need more input to get a handle on this situation.
I think that I may be wrong but it just makes logical sense.
Seems logical, but what do they do with countries where the majority of the local sites are in .com or .nu? This happens to be the case in a.o. Sweden. Dot-coms form a significant minority of the local sites in almost all European countries. AV might be using language recognition and/or DNS lookup or both - I don't know how they do this.
>wanna be found in more than one country specific engine you have to submit to all of those
But this is what Ted is saying is pointless. You will be wiped out of the other ones as soon as you submit to a new one. And he has not only given us a couple of really eye opening examples of that above, but is in fact quoting an AV source.
So the whole issue has grown to something much bigger than I envisaged when I started this thread. The new question is: Are multilingual sites possible at all any more, if you want to be found in AltaVista? (They were a bad idea before this, but for other reasons.) Can you submit the various parts - e.b. mydomain.com/english/ mydomain.com/deutsch/ mydomain.com/french/ etc. one each to local Altavistas without being wiped out from the previous ones or can't you?
Millions upon millions of European sites could be affected and penalized by this.
I have no direct answers right now but have an email address at home to a programmer at alta vista I will see if i can get the answers we are all looking for
Sorry for misunderstanding you... Look tomorrow I should have reponse by then
:) numediagirl
Been through the process of translating, optimizing and submitting translated pages to Spanish, French, German and Swedish engines and directories. Most of the info gathered from this forum. Big thanks Jan for all the effort ;)
What a pain in the butt it has been though!
"Ajouter un site sur" ,
"seite anmeldan" ,
"Lagg till side" ,
"Anadir URL"
The listings and referers are starting to come through now! Listed in the German AV but not the others yet and after what Ted said, not sure that I will be!
Seems like a silly policy though!
I have no affiliation with TopDog but I am a happy user. That program automates submissions to a large number of non-English search engines.
>Seems like a silly policy though!
Agreed. If this is what it appears to be, there will be panic among European webmasters. Any export oriented company will have - and must have - its site in at least local language + English, French and German at the very least. And the normal design is to have three flags on the main page, linking to directories below where foreign langauge content is kept. If they have to choose one Altavista - then the whole thing is dead and they have to split the site up into separate domains.
For example, Altavista is starting to split one language into it's different variations. If you go to es.altavista.com they now ask you what "version" of spanish you wish to view.
Vasco
Catalán
Castellano
Galician
They are really trying to tackle how they determine and display sites based on language. If they do they are going to make a large leap ahead of the rest.
So, dot-coms seem to be safe. They are hard to discriminate against anyway, if they are in the same local language as the local AltaVista. But what about internatonal domains? dot-se, dot-de, dot-nl, dot-fr and so on? They are easy to move to the local AltaVista. The examples that Ted was linking to are scary and need a rational explanation.
Although I'll admit that Ted's example is somewhat odd, in my eyes it works to prove this theory wrong rather than reinforcing it. If AV does drop your previous regional listing when you submit to a different regional AV, than CNN shouldn't have any pages listed in the swedish version. I would assume that this is a difference in spidering/linkstructure rather than some kind of penalty.
Definitely worth more testing though......I'll be interested in seeing what you guys figure out
