Is AllTheWeb On Death Row?

A real shame if this is just another 'click generator' for Overture

[markd]

I always had a 'soft spot' for Alltheweb. I know many of our clients who also liked this engine.

Even with the recent intrusion of Overture results, it still seemed to return reasonable results - even if getting indexed seemed a bit hit and miss.

For me, it had a certain quality sadly missing in many (most?) search engines now, namely 'credibility'.

So, is Alltheweb just going to be a 'click/revenue generator' for Overture?

If so, what will happen to Lycos results and to Scirus?

I bet my knowledge-base of all things Fast on this forum - Heini - is gutted :)

[heini]

Short answer: ATW will display the same results as AV: the new Yahoo search. I guess Yahoo would simply shut down the site, but it has a marketshare of around 1% in several countries, which amounts to something.

As to being gutted: Basically we have said goodbye to this once great engine at the moment Fast sold it to Overture.

[Rumbas]

Amen. To my knowledge Alltheweb.com will be a mirror of Yahoo Search. Altavista is in the row as well. However AV was kind of a suprise to them in terms of market share and power of the brand.

The once so popular search engine is actually still being used to search. Eventhough the glow is fading :)

RIP

[skippy]

It is a shame. I also have a soft spot for ATW. When ever Google would throw a fit I found myself searching there. I sure will miss the back links search.

[markd]

.. and Scirus anyone?

[heini]

Scirus is powered by Fast Search & Transfer ASA, the company that sold ATW as part of their websearch division to Overture last year.
The company has since been operating very successfully in the enterprise search market.

[markd]

Thanks Heini, so presumably the integrity of this resource is safe from Overture?

[heini]

Mark, scirus is an interface to the realms of one of the largest publishing houses worldwide, large parts of the content available through scirus is their own expensive pay per view content, this has nothing to do with websearch etc.

[markd]

Ahh I see Heini - thank you very much.

Hence the reason I got an email from this publishing house regarding 'advertising' (banners etc.) on Scirus.

Makes sense now!

[trillianjedi]

ATW will display the same results as AV: the new Yahoo search.

What a waste of a good database and algo.

Very sad. I was also an ATW fan. In fact, my search bar in WW uses it.

TJ

[sem4u]

You might want to take a look here:

webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20040305YahooTalksBlackHatOptimizationAndSearchAsMedia.html

Tim also mentioned that alltheweb and AltaVista could soon have their own distinct algorithms and indices. The results will still be relevant, he said, but different.

Seems to go against what everyone has been saying.

[edited by: heini at 12:01 pm (utc) on Mar. 8, 2004]
[edit reason] delinked [/edit]

[Rumbas]

>Seems to go against what everyone has been saying.

..provded that guy is telling the truth.

[markd]

.. and also that you want to:

Pay for the privilege of having an 'editor' review your pages for a non-refundable fee.

Pay to have you URL's included in the Overture-distributed/Ink database

Pay per click.

And repeat the above process in trying to optimise for AllTheWeb, AV, Yahoo etc. As far as I am aware, you cannot choose (and pay accordingly) to be in Fast OR Yahoo - it's blanket inclusion even if the engines will have their own algos.

Me, I prefered PFI where you could choose which engines/network you were targeting and optimise accordingly...

Still got black armbands on for Fast...

[walkman]

it doesn't make sense for Y! to have three different search dbs with their own staff and research. They might just change a thing or two in the algo to make it somewhat different, but I think it's smart to have them show Y! results.

[snort]

I'll also miss ATW. It's a shame Yahoo chooses to kill of one of their better engines. And I'm not the only one who thinks ATW is great - it won second place in the 2004 Search Engine Watch Awards [searchenginewatch.com].

[Spica]

I suppose it may be a cost-cutting decision from Yahoo, and a better way to compete with Google. However, I too will miss ATW if it loses its true identity.

[xbase234]

If they are buying up and folding these natural crawler based SE's, it looks like Yahoo! has paved the way for a new crawler based engine to emerge in a big way. (Gigablast, are you listening?).

[ronin]

What are the chances of a small group within Alltheweb breaking away to do semi-independent, cutting edge development in the same way that the Mozilla foundation broke away from Netscape?

Would Y! allow it? Tim?

[Tropical Island]

it won second place

That's all fine and good however if you don't have a reasonable amount of traffic what value is it?

[spaidermen]

When is it going to switch to Yahoo! new index?

[Alternative Future]

>>What are the chances of a small group within Alltheweb breaking away to do semi-independent, cutting edge development in the same way that the Mozilla foundation broke away from Netscape?

Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't NS part of the Mozilla open source project, whereas ATW would have rights on there code and signed contracts not allowing anything out of the office so to speak. I might be wrong as i said about the open source and i would like to be corrected if so.

-George