121–130 of 323 posts
"...AltaVista was essentially a test case for one of Digital’s supercomputers, the AlphaServer 8400 TurboLaser." I loved the seeming technical excesses of Digital so much. Nothing they did seemed as calm and staid as Cray, Sun or even SGI. Think about that name - Alpha Server 8400 Turbo Laser
This article misses one of the primary reasons for AV's demise -- we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google was gaining mindshare. A ridiculously high percentage of our front page links were 404s, while Google was always fresh. This was particularly bad because one of our earlier strong points was fresh indexes. Our ability to refresh the supplementary index on the fly was awesome. When you…
Why was that primary index not updated for those several months? What happened that led to that?
I really, really miss those boolean operators.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now. (Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences) Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of…
I suspect it's a reflection of the way the majority of their audience interacts with search. For a large number of people, Google's ability to answer the underlying question, rather than explicitly identify pages where all search terms appear, means it works better. If you think of Google as a way to get answers, this is good. If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experien…
Plus, they're inadequate.
Altavista were also the first ones doing online translation. babelfish.altavista.com, anyone remember that? The Babelfish being Douglas Adams' fictional fish that you stuck in your ear to use as a universal translator. there was also a fake domain called alta-vista.com that was very much of the goatse variety.
I remember using babelfish as a way of sometimes getting around my high school's internet filter. I don't remember exactly why/how it worked, and it didn't always work, but it was fun when it did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now. (Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences) Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of…
does it work well if you put the individual words in quotes? It seems to rank popularity above exact match, and a word in quotes forces it to be present.
No.
This article misses one of the primary reasons for AV's demise -- we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google was gaining mindshare. A ridiculously high percentage of our front page links were 404s, while Google was always fresh. This was particularly bad because one of our earlier strong points was fresh indexes. Our ability to refresh the supplementary index on the fly was awesome. When you…
Why didn't you update your primary index for several months? Were there serious technical breakages?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now. (Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences) Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of…
I suspect it's a reflection of the way the majority of their audience interacts with search. For a large number of people, Google's ability to answer the underlying question, rather than explicitly identify pages where all search terms appear, means it works better. If you think of Google as a way to get answers, this is good. If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experien…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They used to behave in Google as you describe and it was quite reliable. But somewhere along the line, Google changed how it handles search expressions (for the worse, in my opinion).
A comment below you mentions Verbatim Mode [0]. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks promising. [0] https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2126346/google-introd...
This article misses one of the primary reasons for AV's demise -- we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google was gaining mindshare. A ridiculously high percentage of our front page links were 404s, while Google was always fresh. This was particularly bad because one of our earlier strong points was fresh indexes. Our ability to refresh the supplementary index on the fly was awesome. When you…
How is it that you could refresh your supplementary index and then couldn’t?