Altavista redirect on URL's..

altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?...etc.

[han solo]

Thanks for the help earlier...here is another question:

What is the purpose of the redirect in the AV database? So they can track click throughs, ranks, adjust the algo, or what?

Or maybe they are plotting to charge the people for their ranks, because they need money, and this way they have the click through data? ;)

Thanks again.

[cirelle]

Hi,

With av being owned by cmgi, a dave wetherell company, and the fact that cmgi stock has gone in the dumper these days, and av is touted by company officials to make profit by next year, you gotta figure something is up.

They also own Engage, a company dedicated to mining the trends of internet users.

I suspect there is a mix going on, and don't forget lycos because cmgi owns part of that too.

my penny

c

[littleman]

At the very least, gathering and extrapolating surfing patterns should be profitable. The numbers going through AV are huge, I'm sure they could use that data to do forecasting, market analysis and such.

[cirelle]

absolutely, they have been at this (engage) for about 4 years now, (used to work for cmgi).

c

[NFFC]

>gathering and extrapolating surfing patterns should be profitable

Might be more important now that they have dumped DoubleClick and are dealing with ads in-house.

[cirelle]

about 3-4 weeks ago, i remember hearing something about microsoft building in technology to the browser that will give the consumer control over these remote snoopers, and double click was somewhat disturbed about it.

fyi, dave wetherell is a personal friend (or acquaintance) of b gates.

might be something in the works.. especially if ms has a don't mess with me key they sell to preferred customers.

c

[han solo]

I knew about the cmgi connection...news about the in-house treatment of banners, though. My personal thought, and thanks all for the input, is that they are doing this as part of the whole, "let's focus on search."

Notice that many portals have tracking now, and AV following suit isn't a surprise, I just wish I had some sort of rationale to go along with the move.

Perhaps they are going to insert their own links in place of all the stuff they dumped, and then sell placement ala goto? he he he

[cirelle]

Well ya know, they have a content portal called myway.com formerly planetdirect.com (i had built the original server farm which at that time was 24 servers) and have recently dropped an abundance of branded content isps as it was not profitable (i know via personal experience). but it looks as tho there is a mix of search, tracking, and leader content available to them.

just a guess, but if i had that sort of infrastructure, i know what i would do. unfortunately i don't have the resources to implement something in competition (but that is another story) :)

c

[Brett_Tabke]

This is confusing: what redirect are you talking about?

[han solo]

Yesterday, when I performed a search, they had a redirect on the urls listed for the sites matching my query, beginning with altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?...

Although I don't see it this morning. Maybe I was dreaming? ;)

I really don't believe it, though. Anyone else see what they had when you moused over the links?

[NFFC]

>Maybe I was dreaming?

Were they in this [webmasterworld.com] format?

[han solo]

Yes, they were! Thanks for sharing, and the other post did have more info, which is great.

If I ever actually have a better idea, I'll post it. Thanks for sharing, though. Cheers!

[Brett_Tabke]

Ok. Well, I've still not seen it, but I know what to look for. Thanks.

[NFFC]

>Thanks for sharing

Thank YOU, I got the feeling everyone else thought I was dreaming too! As least now there are two of us who "dream".<g>

Did I ever tell you about my UFO experience...

[han solo]

I know I am resurrecting this thread from way back but, AV is at their redirect scheme again, quick, everybody look before it disappears, and NFFC and I are the only crazy ones! ;)

[altavista.com...]

is how it looks when you mouse over the links, thanks for posting this before, NFFC.

Cheers,
Han_Solo,

PS. Still don't really know why they are doing this, any new thoughts?

[2_much]

This seems to be something similar to what AOL is doing. On the mouseover, the URL shows at the bottom...but when you click on the site, it has a redirect command and a whole bunch of funny characters at the end. I know this is the Altavista forum but it seems to be a related issue. Does anybody have any ideas about this?

Thanks,
2M

[cirelle]

this appears to be a proactive approach to tracking the clickthrus as i have read the ranking of a particular site on these engines is also affected by the number of clicks that site gets.

My guess is this type of tracking might produce better reports (for altavista) as well as an automated way to consistently update a sites ranking based on the number of clicks.

just a gut feeling, take it for what it's worth

c

[cirelle]

>Altavista Redirects:

I have been thinking about the redirect situation on altavista and think they might be averaging the popularity by cliks (in my previous post) as the [altavista.com...] search interface seems to be a round robin (possibly in addition to hardware load balancing solution at each ip). This would figure why sometimes you get an interface that has redirects and sometimes you don't.

Name: altavista.com
Addresses: 209.73.164.94, 209.73.164.95, 209.73.164.96, 209.73.164.97 209.73.164.98, 209.73.180.1, 209.73.164.90, 209.73.164.91, 209.73.164.92
209.73.164.93

Just a thought but I don't think I'm gonna pop any more bubbles over this one. :)

c

[Marcia]

cirelle, looks like they are friends or acquaintances:

Excerpted from the new "start page" for AV free internet access, being cancelled:

We regret to inform you that AltaVista’s free Internet access will terminate service on December 10th. AltaVista has been forced to discontinue this offering because the company who provided the service and telecommunications infrastructure for it, 1stUp Corp., is going out of business. This change will not affect the availability of our search or free email services at AltaVista.com.

We have made special arrangements with MSN to assist U.S. based AltaVista Members who would like to transition to the MSN® Internet access service. For a limited time, users who sign up for MSN will receive three months free of unlimited Internet access. .

Please be advised that AltaVista has no affiliation with MSN and does not assume any responsibility for its availability, quality or terms of service.

They've been running a big MSN promo on their big banner that they run on the page (I use them for backup when MSN is down)

I've been noticing periodic refreshes when at AV when a browser is open, but not active - was wondering what it was.

[cirelle]

Yes Marcia. They are related :)

I have noticed the refresh about every 300 seconds according to the refresh tag on the page. <meta http-equiv=refresh content=300> right after the style code.

My guess is they are not making enough on the ads as they are probably selling on click thrus... Views would be more profitable.

Then too, microsoft is going to introduce a filter on their browser that will allow the user to view or not view banner ads, targeting companies such as doubleclick.

Additionally, there is a company called Engage that is typicaly hired by companies such as doubleclick (engage is owned by cmgi as well) and tracks demographics when a visitor "clicks" on a banner ad. My guess is as microsoft likes to get into everything it may want in on that market as well. but who knows?

I wish microsoft would not indulge in the isp market as I have a personal interest.

c