Anyone else getting “You don't have permission to access /about/altavista/ on this server.” ?
Didn’t you hear? They stopped updating their indexes.
/s
Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
251–260 of 323 posts
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#252This 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…
My recollection was that as soon as anyone - but especially techies - tried Google even once they never went back.
The lack of fresh index surely was a factor but not sure whether it was primary.
Obvious question - why did you not update the index? Was it that it was obvious Google was going to win and made people give up? (edit - never mind - you address this in other comments)
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Which is kinda ironic given Google was born on the back of a DARPA contract :- https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
The QZ article says that
>In the mid 1990s, . . . from a place that would come to be known as Silicon Valley
In the mid 1990s the name Silicon Valley had been used in mainstream media for at least a dozen years.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#254Anyone else getting “You don't have permission to access /about/altavista/ on this server.” ?
I’m getting this too.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but IMO that made no difference whatsoever from a consumer's standpoint. With cheaper techniques, the idea is that the "more capital efficient" way of indexing the ever-expanding web would in turn provide better results for an improved consumer experience. It's the old adage of "do more with less" . For example, see the old Danny Sullivan graphs[0] showing how Google's index was growing faster than AltaVista. Having…
I'm not so sure it applied back then. Before Google, the core issue was to get a good result in the random garbage you were returned in search results. You'd use quotes and plus/minus or AND/OR operators, maybe strip out words like xxx and porn and warez, and hope for the best. Staleness was, frankly, of little concern if you got a few relevant results. That the AV index was stale was news to me before I read this th…
> I'm not so sure it applied back then
It did apply, to a point. Before Google, I had switched to AllTheWeb as my search engine of choice since a lot of sites just wouldn't show up in AltaVista no matter what you searched for, and ATW had a bigger index (I guess staleness could have had the same result).
But of course eventually I switched to Google for the better search results.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experience with (and expectations of) search engines, this is very frustrating. And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a seemingly unnecessary inconvenience. Google really needs to develop a "pro mode" search engine that works for this use case. I get…
"Google really needs to" in the sense that it would be useful, or that it would be a good investment for them? Sure it can afford to do it, but how would it help them make more money?
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#257This 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 wouldn't say it was just the index issue that allowed Google to take prominence. It was the browser toolbar that really killed AltaVista. I didn't know anything about Google until mid 2000, and when I used it, I just thought it was an AltaVista clone. Fast forward to fall 2000, and once after getting bad results on AltaVista, I tried Google again. At the time, I never bookmarked either of the sites or set them as m…
I was expecting you to say Google won because it didn't put out one of those adware toolbars crowding your browser. I would never install one of those. I just put Google as my home page.
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#258Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /about/altavista/ on this server.
Apache/2.4.10 (Debian) Server at digital.com Port 443
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: "[Alta Vista] broadened the use of boolean operators in search. Like some competing search engines, it supported AND, OR, and NOT." My recollection is that Alta Vista supported boolean operators, but defaulted to OR while Google defaulted to AND . So searching Alta Vista for something like "$CommonWord $UncommonWord" would return results with high-ranking pages for $CommonWord that drown out all the…
Although it's very much anecdotical, I, too, distinctly remember that Google defaulted to AND (unlike today, a very hard AND at the time), and that this made a noticeable difference in searching habits. My theory on why this might matter even for people who knew how to use the operators is this: With OR as default, you would first try your query without operators, get page upon page of irrelevant results, and then st…
The problem with AND as a default is that 'normal' people (i.e. people who have no idea what boolean means) operate search engines something like this: 1. type some words in, and get no or incorrect results; 2. add some extra words, and repeat the search, with the idea they are making the search more specific; 3. be confused as to why they still don't get the results they want. a default of OR, on the other hand, means adding search terms ends up being useful...
Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
#260No permission to access ...
same thing