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Age of the page in the database is certainly on of the more important criteria's on alta (although that isn't the only thing). Alta is doing a good job of balancing the off the page stuff with the onthepage stuff. Just keep pitching. Instead of targetting 2 or 3 word phrases on Alta, start with 3 and 4 word phrases and work up.
I have also seen a few pages listed at the top of some results that look like someone took every word out of a dictionary and placed them on their page. There is a lot of speculation about them doing a good job of picking out spam but let me tell you their system isn't that good at detecting it. Only if someone reports your site will they really knock it out.
If you have been watching Altavista on a semi-daily basis you will see that they are having quite an identity crisis. They are constantly changing their layouts and so forth. Most of the sites under the keywords I have targeted have been there for over 5 months. They do a lot of rotations but sooner or later the same ones are back in the same place or near it.
The bad thing about all this is that I get the idea that they are doing all their experiments in a live manner. I wish they would put it on some beta sub-domain site but it looks like they are doing all the tests on their main search service.
Just be patient. I know that's not what you or what the boss or what the clients want to hear but don't worry. Things will turn around for them soon enough. They have some of the best brains out their building their search system. Sooner or later they will be back if not near the top. Part of the reason for their delay is financial problems. If they get bought out by someone hopefully they will retain most of their engineers. If not then let's just pray that they restructure things right.
