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Showdown News Vol. 1 No. 6
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= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Smart is beautiful. The nice blue mountain is gone. And on Monday, the new AltaVista launched. This special edition of
the Showdown News takes an in-depth look at this new incarnation of AltaVista, going beyond the press blitz to see what
really changed beyond the colors. Read on for details on the changes, the new size, site clustering, search features, new
content, and vanished content. I first saw a glimpse of the new interface for a brief time on Sunday, October 24, but then it changed back to the old
version. By Monday, the new version was up fairly consistently, but it has already changed since then. I have a feeling that
the interface is not completely settled yet, so watch for other minor changes in the near term future. THE CHANGES So what's different? AltaVista has a new slogan, logo, colors, and an almost completely redesigned interface. AltaVista
Live is the new name for the My AltaVista personalization service. Directory categories are now available on the top page
from a new data source. Other changes include a news database, a different relevance algorithm, site clustering, company
fact sheets, a larger Web database, and a smaller Web database (more about that in a bit). Yet even with this huge change
on the surface, most of the underlying technology and search features appear to function about the same. On Monday, the new AltaVista had separate tabs for searching news, discussions, shopping, and categories. And there was
no directory on the front page. Later in the week, the separate tabs (for focusing the search to use AltaVista's terminology)
disappeared from the top page and only appear after running a search. Also, the directory categories from the Open
Directory Project are browseable from the top page and not just available as an alternate search. SIZE How can AltaVista have both a larger and a smaller Web database? Their new claims state that they index 90% of Web
SITES and have more than 250 million pages in their Web database. Note that the 90% of Web sites claim is impossible to
prove and that it definitely does not mean 90% of the Web. If we do not have an exact count of the total number of Web
sites, then this is 90% of an unknown number. It also implies that whatever their number of sites covered, they may only index one page from the site, certainly not all of
the pages on the site. Several people have noticed that their sites which were formerly in AltaVista are there no longer. As
of today, mine is one that has gone missing. Earlier this week, Chris Sherman reported that his site Web search site at
About.com was no longer there. So however they grew in size, they have still left plenty out. And many pages and even
sites that used to be in AltaVista may no longer be there. SITE CLUSTERING As to the 250 million claim, that is going to be tough to count. AltaVista has never been very accurate at counting anyway,
and now it clusters results by site. The number reported is closer to the number of sites than the total number of records, at
least for small searches. For example, a search on "hemilaryngectomy" resulted in the message "52 pages found."
However, on record #2 from annals.com, there was the option for "More pages from this site." Clicking on that link results
in six pages, and all had the search term. None of the additional five pages was found in the 52 listed records. Since there
is no way to uncluster the results, getting an accurate account requires checking the additional number of records available
under every "More pages from this site" link. So a new Search Engine Showdown size analysis is going to have to wait until I can figure out an effective way to count
the clustered sites as well. In the meantime, on the few searches I tried, the new database finds more records than
previously. It seems to find about as many as Fast and a bit more than Northern Light. In general I like their site clustering, although it would be convenient to be able to uncluster the results at times to see all
of the hits AltaVista found, especially on very precise searches that only find a few dozen records. At least AltaVista does
not put the "More pages from this site" message after every hit as HotBot foolishly does. Instead, AltaVista takes after
Infoseek and Northern Light who only have the message after sites which actually have additional hits. SEARCH FEATURES So far, all of the advanced search features seem to work just like they did before the change. At first, the language limits
were not on the top page, but they are back on there today. All of the field searches, limits, Boolean syntax, and other
advanced techniques listed in the Search Engine Showdown AltaVista review should still work. Beyond some of the new
content available, no new search features came with this release, as far as I could find. And all of the inconsistencies noted on the AltaVista Inconsistencies page still seem to be there as well. If you find other
inconsistencies, please use the form linked at the bottom of the following page to report them. WHAT'S NEW Several new or more easily accessible features have come with the AltaVista relaunch: a news database, Usenet
discussions from RemarQ, company fact sheets, real-time stock quotes, and more sophisticated language controls News Database. The news database is a new section on AltaVista. The searchable database apparently comes from several news wires.
Take a look at the available news source on the AltaVista Live News section <http://jump.altavista.com/gi_ne>. They
include AP, Reuters, ZDNet, the Industry Standard, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Browsing shows that
the results come from an AltaVista branded versions of the news wire, not from the public Web sites of the various news
sources. The news search can be limited by time: last 6 hours,12 hours, 24 hours, 7 days, or 14 days. However, this limit is not
available on the initial AltaVista search screen. The time given in the results display is for Pacific Time. In a quick
comparison between the AltaVista and Northern Light news wire services, Northern Light found more stories and more
current news stories. Try searching 'the' on both Northern Light and AltaVista with the date set to two weeks. As of
today, AltaVista found 9,968, and Northern Light found 38,621. RemarQ Usenet AltaVista has also added the ability to search Discussions. This is available on the front screen as well as in the follow-up
focus search options. The Discussions choice searches RemarQ's Usenet news database of forums and messages. This
replaces AltaVista's own database of Usenet news. The AltaVista version of the RemarQ database also has relatively quick
response time, especially when compared to searching messages at the RemarQ site. Company Fact Sheets On general Web searches, AltaVista now makes "company fact sheets" available for some hits. Look at the end of the display after a search for a fact sheet. It will be included, when available, along with the other possible end of records options of Translate and More pages from this site. The company fact sheet information can include information from several sources. For publicly traded companies, it can include the stock symbol, address, registered domains, a map, and a Hoover's
company profile. It may also link to subsidiaries, parent, and other locations. For smaller companies, educational
institutions, government agencies, and even individuals, the information may be drawn only from the domain registry
database. Real Time Stock Quotes For those registered to use AltaVista Live, there is an option to receive real-time stock quotes. The lengthy license
agreement excludes certain users and anything other than personal use of the data. Language Settings On the right is a new option for language settings. It provides option for searching more than one language at a time. It
also offers an opportunity to specify non-Roman alphabets that can be used to enter search terms. WHAT'S VANISHED? In addition to the blue colors and the old mountain logo, some content is gone as well. The old AltaVista Usenet news
database was still available on Monday, but it appears to be completely gone as of today. As mentioned earlier, AltaVista
now offers the RemarQ Usenet database for discussion group searching. Earlier this week you could still search the Usenet
database at some of the international mirror sites, but that is now unavailable. So it looks like the separate AltaVista
Usenet database is gone. The LookSmart database is also gone. It has been replaced with an AltaVista version of the Open Directory, and the new
display makes it much easier to browse directory categories. THE VERDICT My opinion on all these changes? Can't say I think much of the "Smart is Beautiful" slogan. I miss the old blue colors and
the mountain logo. But beyond the superficial window dressing, AltaVista has increased their content and services. I am
quite glad to see that the power searching features remain and that the database has grown in size. The news database,
company fact sheets, language settings, real-time quotes, and site clustering are all improvements. AltaVista also
announced improvements to its relevancy ranking. At the same time, I would still like to see the inconsistencies fixed, the return of the Usenet database, the ability to
uncluster results, and advanced search capabilities for the news database. And how they managed to delete so many
functioning sites at that same time that the total database size grew, only AltaVista knows.
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