Forum Moderators: open
for my main multi-lingual site (stronger European audience):
Altavista
2002 3,3 %
2001 5.1 %
MSN passed AV in 2002 in ref.% for me.
Basically I get the most traffic from MSN, second most from AltaVista.
Quite simply the Google listings are full of SPAM/doorway pages. AltaVista has gotten better about yanking out the garbage.
True, when I did have top rankings in Google they produced 300-500% more traffic than AltaVista... but the problem is KEEPING those google listings!
About 3 to 4 months ago, we were seeing major increases from AV but in the last week or two its dropped back to neglible. better than teoma and alltheweb but behind AOL and a long way behind Google and MSN.
Havent bothered to check rankings so not sure its because of a reindex or just drop of in traffic to AV.
it won't be long before AV goes along the same route as Hotbot and vanishes
I've heard these predictions so often here at Webmasterworld, that last spring I was going to ban Scooter. Im glad I didn't!:)
Either way, I haven't had to submit anything to get listed / ranked / usually in the top spots...I think their current algo might prefer 'fresh' stuff.
However, their referral percentage is down to less than 1%
...though I will say, they have been the first search engine to drive referrals many times on many sites. Only thing is, a fresh db with new stuff doesn't matter if nobody uses the thing.
Wisenut isn't beating them, but on a couple sites, they are neck and neck :)