Google versus Altavista

[Aaron]

Hi. I was wondering if someone can give me any specific tips besides the usual stuff to do well on altavista.

My site seems to do very well in google , due to the ODP listing, but is not even within the top 50 for altavista. Is there anything specific I need to do to rank well in google?

One point though, I may have accidently spammed the SEs because of several mirror sites. The thing is also my webpages lists all the other mirrors, so my guess is the bots jumped into them and listed them as well.

Google doesn't seem to mind.LOL, using my targetted keyword, One is 1st [the one which ODP lists] and then another 3 mirrors take up the teen ranks.

I also tried one of those fast URL services, and strangely enough, google and other SEs found it by themselves and seem to see it as a valid entry!

I think altavista penalises mirror sites more than google. I also heard that AV ranks older sites higher, so that could explain why my very new site is so lowly placed. Also AV doesn't seem to use ODP? I think it does, so it's updating is less frequent ?

Thanks.

[tedster]

I have a coupe sites that have had the same struggle you're talking about -- great on Google on buried on AV. A couple things that have helped me out.

First, if you haven't seen it yet, check out the webmaster's FAQ [doc.altavista.com] that AV offers. They offer a lot more detail than most search engines do, and the page gives a lot of hints as to what will and won't help get rankings on AV.

Here's a few other observations:

1) AV doesn't like high keyword density (say over 7 or 8%), but Google often seems to reward it. I got better results on AV when I backed off the keyword repetitions.

2) Yes, longevity helps on AV. So, what you gonna do but wait, right?

3) Being in Looksmart seems to help. There's a tight partnership between AV and LS.

4) Mostly, AV has been shifting all over the place, and I'm not convinced anything is stable there yet. They seem to be struggling to regain what they lost in the last half of 2000, and perhaps paving the way for some kind of payment model.

[cger]

It seems it's pretty hard to get any good position on Alta, I had no success unlike google where I managed to get multimple sites almost everywhere from 1 to 10 on all major phrases/kw's in the same very competetive category.
At the same time, the same sites are burried deep down on Alta, they still show up in first 10 on Lycos and Excite. I'm puzzled by Alta.
I also read that google brings 100 times more traffic anyways with the same positions, so maybe there is no point bothering with Alta at all?

[rcjordan]

>I'm puzzled by Alta.

Everyone is puzzled by AV.

>maybe there is no point bothering with Alta at all?

Every SE has it's niche demographic. Some are still reporting strong traffic generated by AV on tech-related terms. On the other hand, I can't get significant referrals on travel phrases, yet still get many times that from (supposedly dead, but not yet buried) NBCi.