I even used the free dial-up (ad-supported) internet that Altavista provided back in the day!
Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
141–150 of 323 posts
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#142This 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…
I feel that Google brought in a shift in thinking of internet companies. In pre-google era, companies operated like an government office, once they gain marked foot hold they virtually stop enhancing their products. Google and other successful startups have taught us that a tech company is prone to fall if it doesn't innovate.
I disagree. For example AV had image search before google, not very good but not for lack of effort. If anything the lack of focus on the core web search because attention was elsewhere to improve AV in other ways was it's undoing.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#143This 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…
> Also, any AV article which doesn't note that we bought Elon Musk's first company is inherently flawed. ;)
Agreed. My previous manager had worked with Elon Musk at Zip2 (maybe even as the CTO). He used to talk about how peculiar Elon is. Does it ring a bell who I might be talking about? :)
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#144This 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…
PageRank is using the stationary distribution of a random walk; that’s very different than just incoming links (which AV did have) In a way, it ranks a link by its own incoming links (which are ranked by their incoming links etc). It was possible to game AV by setting up 100 sites that points to your own. In pagerank, you essentially had to convince already popular pages to link to yours. For a while, google effectiv…
Page rank is just one way to order pages. Another is relevance. How you combine the two ordering schemes is another big question.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. Scale and diversity applies not only to ingested documents but users. I'm under no illusions that Google has said "here are a chunk of users who may want precise search, at a cost of X, but this other demographic can bring us revenue Y". That's fine, it's their business, but it makes the virtual monopoly even more painful.
It provides an opening for dgg users or a smaller search engine. Google has to cover all users which means not everyone will be happy.
Sure but it would be nice to see DDG add a trivial usability feature like limiting search to the recent year before expecting them to address more challenging initiatives.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#146This 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…
PageRank is using the stationary distribution of a random walk; that’s very different than just incoming links (which AV did have) In a way, it ranks a link by its own incoming links (which are ranked by their incoming links etc). It was possible to game AV by setting up 100 sites that points to your own. In pagerank, you essentially had to convince already popular pages to link to yours. For a while, google effectiv…
I do seem to recall AV getting flooded with spam --- porn spam to be exact. I remember myself and all the nerd kids in my high school computer lab would joke that you could search for something completely innocuous like "yarn" and always get back at least a couple of porn links.
This of course was also at a time when "whitehouse.com" was a porn site.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
PageRank is using the stationary distribution of a random walk; that’s very different than just incoming links (which AV did have) In a way, it ranks a link by its own incoming links (which are ranked by their incoming links etc). It was possible to game AV by setting up 100 sites that points to your own. In pagerank, you essentially had to convince already popular pages to link to yours. For a while, google effectiv…
Page rank is just one way to order pages. Another is relevance. How you combine the two ordering schemes is another big question.
Good point - pagerank is a query-independent signal which is harder to game, but the (very large) part of ranking that is query dependent was still very much gameable.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#148A few historical notes: Paul Flaherty (1964-2006) was a principal engineer at the the Digital Equipment Network Research Laboratory. Paul is credited with having the idea for Alta Vista, but I think that it was Andy Freeman's sudden flash of insight that led to Paul's development. Paul had been in Italy at a trade show; when he returned he talked with Brian Reid, who headed the Lab, about the need to find a demonstra…
They sure used a lot of electricity at DECWRL!
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#149This 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…
PageRank is using the stationary distribution of a random walk; that’s very different than just incoming links (which AV did have) In a way, it ranks a link by its own incoming links (which are ranked by their incoming links etc). It was possible to game AV by setting up 100 sites that points to your own. In pagerank, you essentially had to convince already popular pages to link to yours. For a while, google effectiv…
The person you're replying to is clearly aware of search ranking algorithms. You should try looking into the HITS algorithm they mentioned for some additional context.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google was immediately better then anything else from day one. Google was launched in Fall of 1997. In January 98 is when I started using it and it was hands down better then crawlers or any other search engine.
I fear all we have now is anecdotal evidence. :-) In my case, it was a gradual conversion to Google from Altavista than something immediate. So, funny thing: Back then, if one search engine didn't have what you were looking for, you would try another. Now, if Google doesn't have what you are looking for, where do you go? Does it mean the answer does not exist on the Internet? Do you try Bing or Duck?
yandex is what I try second