Euro Altavista submission?

Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

Euro Altavista submission?

Brett_Tabke

12:57 am on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

So all the submission spots in Europe for Altavista are redirecting to the US now?

(sorry if you've hit on this, I don't see a thread for it).

rencke

7:14 am on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

Heini discovered it a week ago and it has been discussed in some length in the Germany thread. All submission from Europe now go into the encrypted submission procedure in the US. We are not sure what to make of this, as it appears that everything new goes into one and the same db, with profound consequences for search replies.

It could be that they are just closing the back door to automated submissions. Or that they are laying the foundations for introducing "Pay-for-inclusion" in Europe. Or that it reflects AV's withdrawal from European markets. Or....

As I said, confusing. Guess we'll have to wait for the dust to settle.

heini

9:51 am on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

>confusing. Guess we'll have to wait for the dust to settle.
In fact the dust is getting thicker.
Today there were less pages of my sites in the german db than in the US db. Up to now it was the other way round.

I do think it would be worthwile to have an overview from all european / international AVs concerning the state of things.

Another thing: Why is nothing about this in the news somewhere? Is AV that unimportant?

<added>The possible connection to the pay-for-inclusion plan was discussed here [webmasterworld.com]

engine

11:24 am on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

Clearly, the merger of such big databases will have repercussions.
Something will have to drop out of the db, otherwise AV will have the largest single global DB!

AV is very important to me.

heini

12:06 pm on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

>Clearly, the merger of such big databases will have repercussions.
Agreed. If it really is a merger. It certainly looks like that, but has not been confirmed by AV yet.

>Something will have to drop out of the db, otherwise AV will have the largest single global DB!
Oh no! We wouldn�t want to have the largest DB! What a nightmare! Let Google have it! C�mon, Fast, take it!

henki

12:44 pm on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

Notice that AV has made it clear what domain suffixes they accept for each European market. I.e. the submission is done centrally in the US with filtering for domain sufix for what to include in the local indexes.

Sweden accept .se .nu .com and .net
Germany accept .de .com .edu. net .au .ch

heini

1:32 pm on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

henki that�s interesting. Are you talking about the new paid inclusion? Or do you refer to the free submit to to AV.com?
Could you post a url?
Thanks

henki

2:36 pm on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

AV still keep national indexes. When you submit to e.g. germany you can not get a .fr domain included to their german index.

E.g. on the swedish submission page (before being taken to the US submission page with the grafic) you can read:

"The website must have one of the following domain sufixes: .se, .nu, .com, .net and .org and they have to be made for swedish users"
[se.altavista.com...] (in swedish)
Freely translated by me. :)

They did not use to state what domains you could use. At some point they threw out all non .se domains but they did accept new submissions. Now we know.

heini

2:53 pm on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

henki
Strange thing. Has this info you mention been there before, or ist it new?
Can�t find such info on AV.de.
Tried to submit a french page (.fr): no problem.
Keeping national indexes:
AV.de has just dumped lots of my pages, which are in AV.com.

henki

3:41 pm on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

Actually I could not find it on the german pages now. But it was there a week ago. Still have it on the swedish page that I quoted.

heini

4:19 pm on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

Might be outdated info.
Still wondering about any official comments from AV. Pay for inclusion...included in what db?

rencke

7:56 pm on Jun 28, 2001 (gmt 0)

>Might be outdated info

No, it is pretty new and I have seen it elsewhere too, just recently. Can't remember where though. Any one with a lot of time on his or her hands? Feel free to check all international AV:s and report back here.

henki

9:23 am on Jun 29, 2001 (gmt 0)

I noticed that they wrote what domains to be used just a week ago on the german and swedish pages. I even think I made a post about it somewhere...

heini

1:20 pm on Jun 29, 2001 (gmt 0)

AV.de results for one of my sites:
+host:www.mydoman.com
-worldwide/all languages:80
-worldwide/german lang.: 78
-germany/all languages: 56
-germany/german: 54

AV.com results for
+host:www.mydoman.com
-worldwide/all languages:80
-worldwide/german lang.: 78
(two pages without the meta "lang")

Before the redirect of the free submission was installed it was the other way round.
Interesting is that the pages dropped from AV.de are the newer ones, submitted to AV.de (not to AV.com!) over the last weeks.

So what is happening? UK Members are just facing the same problem. In their discussion [webmasterworld.com] no one seems to have any doubts about AV merging the dbs and consequently delivering filtered results from one big db.
So a possible solution to this puzzle could be that AV does this merging in steps: big national dbs like .co.uk and .de first, smaller later on.

oLeon

2:16 pm on Jun 30, 2001 (gmt 0)

Yes,
I really can say, it�s the same db, because untill now we distinguished between AV.de and AV.com with the help of different subdirectories what works well, i.e. every db from AV got its specialized pages. Now, all pages are within the same db.
We didn�t lose any pages at this merging.

BTW: I noticed that Av don�t take phrases in searches automatically anymore, i.e. former AV assumed two words as an phrase, if they occure on the page side by side, and this page came up in the results. Now this don�t happen anymore, it seems that it doesn�t matter how the keywords appear.

ettore

8:03 am on Jul 3, 2001 (gmt 0)

Same thing in Italy. The italian submit page [it.altavista.com...] has a link to paid "Fast Submit Service" (Looksmart & AV) and another link redirecting to the US submission page [add-url.altavista.com...]

No mention is made about accepted domains, though.

Checked most pages and I can say we didn't lose anything.
Filtered search for Italian sites works and delivers more or less the same results for the same keywords as it was a few weeks ago.

starec

3:30 pm on Jul 3, 2001 (gmt 0)

The move to a single submit page may not necessarily mean the end of national DBs - I have Mercator hitting me hard these days, just a few days after Scooter had its run - if we talk single database, this behavior would make very little sense, wouldn't it?

heini

4:08 pm on Jul 3, 2001 (gmt 0)

starec which national db are you referring to - don�t know where mercator is spidering.

If - and there is still no confirmation or real proove - this really is a big merger happening it�s clear that it will take some time to be completed. All kind of strange behaviour can be expected.
Lycos.de for example uses Fast results, but still there is a lycos submit plus a lycos spider.
Mercator might very well report to AV.com.
But as I said: still no proove

starec

8:40 am on Jul 12, 2001 (gmt 0)

I talked Mercator which used to spider for es.altavista.com (Spanish altavista) and which worked really well even in months when Scooter was sleeping earlier this year. Maybe they just forgot to turn the Mercator off? With a single DB I do not really see what they use it for...

heini

10:18 am on Jul 12, 2001 (gmt 0)

starec
mercator has been all over my sites recently. Don�t know why. Its still the same strange situation for me: AV.de has dropped all my recently indexed pages, whereas AV.com has listed them all.
I reaaly have no idea how this thing will turn out. I could of course resubmit those pages , but I would have to submit to AV.com, which is senseless, since my pages are listed there. To me it looks as if the process of merging is still incomplete. Just a guess...