Longevity and AV

[beasscr]

Is it true that longevity is a factor in high Alta Vista rankings?

[NFFC]

In my experience no, but that is very much a minority view.

[engine]

I've had mixed results. Some swing around in the top ten while others sit absolutely still.
Over all, they are variable as the algo changes, new sites come in and go out.

[FreeBee]

Longevity, or more specifically "grandfather" pages certainly have been a factor in the AV algo - we seem to go through cycles. Our sets of results in the most recent AV update suggest that it's still a factor but not as important as it was. Who knows what it'll be like six months from now?!

[NFFC]

Define longevity, 3 months, 6 months, 2 years?

[engine]

>Define longevity, 3 months, 6 months, 2 years?

Two years or more.

[Alecto]

I believed in longevity being a factor in AV until this week. Our site has been in AV for about a year and a half. For a long time we were third for our keywords. Then for the last few months we rose to first.

Also in the last few weeks our referrals from AV rose from 5% of our total to 10%.

Everything was fine until a couple of days ago. Now our referrals are down to 2%, and our page doesn't show anywhere for our keywords, at least not in the top 60. I didn't bother to look any further.

So much for longevity. New rules seem to be in force. We'll monitor for a while, but I'm not hopeful. We originally optimised for AV, but at 2% compared to 66% from Google, it may be a waste of time to try and gain more share from AV.

[NFFC]

>Two years or more

In that case a 100% no! imho

[angiolo]

AV is too strange.

I noticed that slight changes in the main page can drop or alter the ranking of that page.

here what happened:
The main page of one of our clients is targeted for two phrases

keyword1 keyword2 keyword3
keyword4 keyword1 keyword2

The sites ranked at the top for

keyword1 keyword2 keyword3
keyword1 keyword2
keyword4 keyword1

After changing something in the bottom that had nothing to do with those keyword the ranking changed:

Now the top page (http://www.mysite.com)

is at the top for

keyword1 keyword2
keyword4 keyword1

We can find

keyword1 keyword2 keyword3

only on page 8, but with this page:

[mysite.come...]

My suggestion is not modify main page that rank fine.