Altavista
Submission Tips
AltaVista recently posted a large
amount of information about how their search engine works. Novices
will find the detailed explanations on certain topics to be very
insightful. There is also new information that even expert Web
marketers will find valuable. Read it all the way through at:
http://doc.altavista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_index.html
AltaVista switched to
a new format on October 25th 1999. The press release claimed the new
index would contain millions of new pages, however during this
process, thousands of existing pages were dropped from its index. Many
people complained that certain pages from their site were dropped. In
many of these cases, multiple pages from a site were simply
"clustered" together under a single listing with a link to
see more pages if desired. This is a new feature at AltaVista that
keeps a single site from dominating the results for a single search.
The benefit of this feature to the Web marketer is that it opens up
more top positions for other Web sites to compete.
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On July
30th, AltaVista introduced their latest site design Important
new changes include the removal of file size and date of index
for search results listings. If you want to see the date and
file size for the search results, http://www.ragingsearch.com/
-- AltaVista's twin site, does have an option that will allow
you to see these details. To enable it, click on the
"Customize" link to the right of the search button
and choose "Complete Results."
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AltaVista uses a
spider to search every page on the web. It indexes each word, even if
the word doesn't actually exists in language. If it is on your page,
it exists in AltaVista. Every word on the entire web is in their
index, including title, meta description, ALT text, links, banner
names, applet object names, the site's URL, host and even your domain
name.
If someone conducts a
search for "gift baskets" it will return a different
set of matches than if they conduct a search for "Gift
Baskets." Include both in your Keyword META tag. You should
also include your important Keywords and Keyphrases.
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Recent
surveys show that 80-90% of people are searching for Keywords
and Keyphrases in lower case.
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AltaVista's will give
unique words a higher ranking, and the Keyword and Description
META tags should include some of these unique Keywords for better
relevancy scores. You should also target these unique Keywords with
the thought that your site doesn't fall into a huge general category. Example:
Targeting the word "free" would put you in a general
category. Targeting "free gift baskets" will be more
specific.
AltaVista also has
automatic phrase searching which has a dictionary of several million
phrases, created by an automated process that uses linguistic patterns
to determine what a phrase is. As a result, pages where search terms
occur in the body text in the order of the search entered, are more
likely to appear than those simply containing the terms, but not in
the specified order. You can view AltaVista's search results in 30
different languages.
AltaVista Claims that
it can search 90% of sites on the Web.
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Tips
That Will Help Your Ranking
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The pages which
appear near the top of AltaVista have the following attributes:
AltaVista favors
longer pages of around 800 to 900 words to achieve the best rankings.
That may sound like a lot of text, but remember they are indexing all
your words. Creating a page within these parameters can make a huge
difference in your rankings, add one repetition of the keyword or
phrase you're targeting to the following areas or your Web page
(or doorway page):
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Here are
some examples of placing the keywords "gift baskets"
in your HTML.
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a) The (TITLE) Tag
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>order gift baskets</TITLE>
</HEAD>
b) The Meta
Keyword Tag
<META NAME="keywords" content="gift baskets,
giftbaskets , Gift Baskets, fruit baskets, gift
shop, baby shower gifts, baby gift baskets, Christmas gifts,
gourmet baskets, gift ideas">
c) The Meta
Description Tag
<META NAME="description" content="Giftbaskets.com
has gift baskets for all occasions from baby shower gifts,
to Christmas baskets, to great gift ideas. We make all
our gift baskets with lots of personal attention and can
deliver our gift baskets within 24 hours to your
door.">
d) The Text Link
If you order a <a href = "http://www.giftbaskets.com">
Gift Basket today and get an extra 10% off. Today Only!
e) The Text
Appearing in the General Body Area (the viewable text)
Thank you for visiting giftbaskets.com. We specialize in gift
baskets for all occasions from baby shower gifts, to
Christmas baskets, to great gift ideas. We make all our gift
baskets with lots of personal attention and can deliver our gift
baskets within 24 hours to your door."
f) Image Source
and Banner Names
<img src="http://www.giftbaskets.com/images/giftbaskets1.jpg"
width="100" height="100" border =0 alt="Gift
Basket Ideas">
g) Alt Texts
<alt="Gift Basket Ideas For All
Occasions">
h) Your Site's URL
<http://www.mygiftbaskets.com>
i) Applet Object
Names
Keep your targeted
Keywords words as close to the FRONT of the tag, and the beginning
of the page as you can. Avoid the temptation to overuse the Keyword.
Consider targeting 2 Keywords on the same page. My suggestion is no
more than 4-5 occurrences of the word on the entire page. Pages
optimized as I've described above tend to rank well most of the time.
Think like the people you want to visit your site. Decide which words
those people would likely use when searching for a site like yours on
a search engine.
Beyond this, AltaVista
seems to place a stronger emphasis on root domain home pages, in
response to single word and popular searches. Other positive factors
seem to include short, focused titles.
AltaVista does make
use of link popularity, and sites with more links pointing at them are
supposed to get a boost in its rankings.
AltaVista also shows
a tendency to list older pages first, when there are a number of pages
about equal in relevancy. This is not always the case, but it does
appear to happen frequently. So your newly-submitted or newly-visited
pages may move higher, over time.
There are
exceptions to all of these factors, of course -- Many people have
especially noticed that pages without meta Keywords tags also seem to
do well.
AltaVista features
Open Directory information within its "My AltaVista"
channel. Near the bottom of the "My AltaVista" home page,
you'll find a "Web Directory" area where you can browse
listings that derive from the Open Directory. To be listed within
here, you need to be listed with the Open Directory.
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More
AltaVista Quick Facts & Tips
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About a month after
submitting your page, AltaVista will re-visit your web site and look
for other pages to add. You can then expect it's spider to return
about every four weeks to check for changes and new pages. You can
expect AltaVista to gather many of the pages from your web site. It
has no particular limit, and many sites have hundreds or thousands of
pages listed.
When a search is
phrased as a question, such as "Where can I buy gift baskets
online?," AltaVista often provides information from the AskJeeves
answer service at the top of its results. These appear under the
heading, "AltaVista knows the answers to these questions "
AltaVista will
sometimes ignore certain words in a query if they appear too many
times in the entire index. That includes words like "web"
and "internet." So even if you have a phrase like "web
development" in your page title, your page may not come up
because AltaVista is only going to look for the word
"development." AltaVista will tell you at the top of the
listings which words, if any, have been ignored. Stop words can be
overridden in advanced mode.
AltaVista will index
the description and Keywords up to a limit of 1,024 characters.
Comments are not indexed. AltaVista currently uses 25 different
languages in their program. Punctuation is not recognized, so
"David's Webpage" appears as "David s Webpage."
When a word or phrase
is called on by a searcher, AltaVista presents the sites in order of
what it considers relevancy. AltaVista "grades" (their word)
every document on the web. From time to time, they rebuild indices
from scratch and have a bad habit of dropping pages during the
process. If this happens to you, you will have to resubmit.
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Pages
heavy with text in a small font size may not get listed. Avoid
using font size lower than 2 as the dominant size for your
body copy.
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Your pages may
disappear for a while only to re-appear days or sometimes weeks later.
Keywords in the Meta
tag "do not take precedence," and thereby are less important
than the title tag and first few lines of text.
Links from pages
containing the Keyword will boost your ranking.
AltaVista can display
two versions of your domain name, "www.domain.com" and
"domain.com". If your server is set up so that both versions
lead to your home page, you could submit both to AltaVista for
indexing.
AltaVista doesn't
seem to use "exact matching," meaning that if your page is
optimized very well for one particular word that might be part of a
larger Keyword phrase, you can achieve a top ranking on that phrase as
well as many others.
For example,
if you have a top ranking on the Keywords "gift baskets,"
you will have an easier time achieving a top ranking for phrases such
as "gift basket service" and "holiday gift
baskets."
AltaVista will
display about 150 characters for your description. If no meta
description tag exists, then AltaVista will use the first text it
finds on the page, not including ALT text.
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By posting
a Meta description, you have more control of what the searcher
will read when your site appears on in his search. By not
posting a Meta description you run the risk of looking very
unprofessional and have no control of what AltaVista will
post.
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AltaVista provides a
filtering mode for its users. Potentially objectionable pages are
filtered in three ways. First, AltaVista's spider tags pages as
objectionable, if it finds certain words and phrases used in
particular ways. Second, the search retrieval software uses a
filtering process developed in partnership with SurfWatch to catch
anything that makes it past the spider-based filter. Third,
AltaVista allows users to report on any pages that may have slipped
through the first two filters.
AltaVista
automatically categorizes Web pages by language. Its spider tries to
determine the language of a Web page at the time it is spidered. There
is no way for a webmaster to specify which language a page should be
assigned to, not even using the Content-Type meta tag. AltaVista also
translates the text it finds into Unicode, which can store characters
for all languages. This allows a single index to serve users all over
the world. A user can perform a search in English, then one in
Spanish, without having to leave the service and go to a Spanish-only
edition.
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Additional
Tip: Consider putting a second targeted Keyword in your
heading tag at the top of the page to potentially boost
relevance instead of simply putting it in the body area.
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AltaVista uses a
ranking algorithm to determine the order in which matching documents
are returned on the results page. Each document gets a grade based on
how many of the search terms it contains, where the words are in the
document, and how close to each other they are. Repeating a word over
and over in a Web page, known as "spamming," has a negative
effect on a site's ranking. As soon as it is discovered by software
programmed specifically to detect spamming, the offending site is
prevented from appearing in the AltaVista index.
"A small number
of sites regularly submit a large number of pages to the AltaVista
index in the hope of showing very frequently on our result pages. The
usual technique is to submit pages with numerous Keywords, or with
keywords unrelated to the real content of the pages. Some people
submit pages that present our spider with content that differs from
what browsers will see. We strongly discourage the use of these
techniques." - AltaVista
"AltaVista is an
index, not a promotional tool. Attempts to fill it with promotional
material lower the value of the index for everyone. Left unchecked,
this behavior would make Web indexes worthless. We will disallow URL
submissions from those who spam the index. In extreme cases, we will
exclude all their pages from the index." - AltaVista
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Submitting
Your Site To AltaVista
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Warning
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If you
already have a great ranking, do NOT resubmit your site. The
search engine algorithm may have changed and you could
actually drop in the rankings.
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ALTAVISTA IS NOW
BLOCKING ALL AUTOMATED SUBMISSIONS
AltaVista has
introduced a new technology on their submission page to block all
automated submissions to their service.
When you access the
Add URL page, it will display a submission code that must be entered.
The code is a series of letters and numbers, but because they are
displayed in a graphic format, automatic submission tools cannot read
the information. As a result, AltaVista says the new system has
stopped submission robots in their tracks.
This is important
because submission tools generally send AltaVista so much spam that
"good" documents get lost among the junk. AltaVista said
that virtually all of the submissions it receives come from robots,
and that 95 percent of all submissions are considered spam. Thus,
AltaVista explained, stopping the robots means that the good stuff can
get through.
Although this
represents a new inconvenience to the Webmaster, AltaVista now claims
to index all submitted pages within one week. This will allow you to
optimize your pages and test their effectiveness quicker than you've
been able to do in the recent past. AltaVista has also stated that it
has removed the five pages per day, per web site limit. There is no
longer any limit as to how many pages you can submit to AltaVista.
http://doc.altavista.com/addurl/
Only submit a few
pages per day, as AltaVista considers submitting a large number of
pages on the same day a possible attempt to spam the search engine.
Generally, between 5 to 10 pages per day is acceptable. You don't need
to submit all of your pages. AltaVista will crawl your site.
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Submitting
simply speeds up the process and helps ensure that particular
pages get in.
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Should you go over
the daily submission limit, AltaVista will respond with a message
saying " Too many URLs at that site have been submitted
today," and it will not process the submission. Usually, you will
be able to submit again on the following day.
If you share an IP
address with other sites (free website hosting), you will have a
harder time submitting your site. The entire domain will have a daily
submission limit. It may get used up by others submitting their pages
before you submit yours. If this constantly happens, try resubmitting
in the afternoon, Pacific Time. That is when AltaVista resets the
submissions counters for each web site. Should you still have
problems, contact AltaVista for help.
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Should you
still have problems, consider putting a crowbar in your wallet
and having your own URL.
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Submitting duplicate
or near-duplicate pages may mean that only one page gets listed.
AltaVista is designed to reduce duplicate pages by retaining only one
version.
AltaVista considers
"spammers" to be sites which:
Submit numerous pages
containing the same content or leading to the same content.
Using Keywords which
are not legitimately descriptive of the page's content.
Submitting the same
URL repeatedly on the same day.
Repeating Keywords
over and over.
Using invisible text
to influence the spider.
Using the meta
refresh command. (This is also very annoying to viewers)
Sites hosted under
the .nu domain are more likely to have trouble getting their pages
listed.
AltaVista's page says
"Please submit only one URL, - Our spider will explore your site
by following links." However, in other pages of their help
section, they indicate that multi-page submission is okay. If you
exceed their limit, they will not process the submission. You will be
notified if this happens.
AltaVista has
software which looks for spamming. They state on their pages that
they spend a lot of time and energy looking for spam. If detected you
may be warned or blacklisted from AltaVista, depending upon the
offense. AltaVista has more spam pages listed than any other major
search engine.
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AltaVista's
New Advance Search Features
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AltaVista has
rolled out its new Advanced Search Center. You will find the URL at:
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&what=web/
"Designed to
meet the needs of demanding Internet searchers, from librarians to
medical researchers," according to the company's press release.
The Advanced Search Center marks the company's fourth specialized
search capability, joining AltaVista's Multimedia, MP3/Audio, Video,
and Image Search Centers.
"No other
Internet service offers a more comprehensive collection of advanced
search tools for its users," said Andrei Broder, vice president
of research at AltaVista. "We are confident that our new
education and community tools will open a wide door to Web users
worldwide who want to experience the power of our Advanced Search
Center and become expert searchers."
Regular AltaVista
users will find the most significant changes are the redesigned,
friendlier user interface, the addition of new "community"
features, and notably bulked-up help files, documentation, and
tutorials. The only significant new control appears to be the ability
to cluster results, limiting results to one per Web site.
The Advanced Search
Tutorial is particularly valuable for searchers wishing to take
advantage of AltaVista's full capabilities. The tutorial consists of
four major parts:
"Directories
vs. Search Engines"
"Advanced
Search Features"
"Main
& Advanced Search Elements"
"How
AltaVista Works"
Each section consists
of numerous subsections, with well-designed navigation features
allowing you to either read the tutorial in sequence or work down
quickly to a particular topic of interest. Numerous examples,
illustrations, and tips add depth to each tutorial.
The "How
AltaVista Works" section is a gold mine of information for both
searchers and Webmasters alike. In this section, AltaVista provides a
detailed blueprint for understanding exactly how its index is created
and how relevance is computed, and it provides specific
recommendations for Webmasters to make Web pages "search engine
friendly." Though it is geared toward Web page authors, searchers
should study this section closely, as it provides invaluable insights
that can help hone and focus search strategies.
The new
"community" sections are bulletin boards dedicated to
specific topics, including "Better Queries," "AltaVista
Friendly Sites," and "Stop the Spammers!" The idea of
forums where AltaVista users can post questions, share information,
and interact with one another is a good one.
For more
information on AltaVista's new plan, see here:
http://doc.altavista.com/addurl/
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