Altavista engine killed quotes

[Fester Bestertester]

Until last month Altavista search engine allowed phrase search by use of
quotes.

This has ceased. Now when quotes are entered in a search, the quote marks are
ignored and deleted when the results are shown.

I've sent Altavista e-mails about this and got curt "we're working on this"
replies.

But how long (it's been almost 8 weeks since I discovered it) does it take to
restore from backup the old engine? Surely they can do this while fixing bugs
in the quotes?

Anyone have some inside information on what's going on?

Thanks.

[www.1-script.com]

responding to
http://www.1-script.com/forums/Altavista-engine-killed-quotes-article57696--1.htm

Post by Fester Bestertester
Until last month Altavista search engine allowed phrase search by use of
quotes.
This has ceased. Now when quotes are entered in a search, the quote marks are
ignored and deleted when the results are shown.

Someone's still using Altavista? I had no idea. Why? I mean, there must be
a reason and I'm as much interested in knowing it as I'm interested in why
anyone would perform what appears to be live testing/debugging on a site
that, according to compete.com still gets around 1M visitors per month.


-------------------------------------

[cshields]

To me it seems like Bing and Yahoo just copy and follow Google. The
results in the serps right now at Bing and Yahoo are almost exactly the
same results that Google had about 6 months ago, and I'll bet if you
could go to the future 6 months from now the results at Bing and Yahoo
will be almost exactly the same results as Google is showing right now.
Neither Bing nor Yahoo have an origional idea in their heads. Google
isn't the great search engine they were 4 years ago but they are still a
good search engine and better than anything else out there right now.
The trouble is whenever anything gets too big the quality always goes
down and Google has gotten too big. The same thing happened with Excite,
AltaVista, ODP/AOL. They were all at one tme the top best search engine
and then they got too big and went downhill. What's different today from
years ago is whenever the top best search engine got too big and went
downhill there was always another hungry search engine ready and eager
to take their place and become the new top search engine. Now there is
nobody eager or ready or willing to take Google's place as the new top
search engine. Why that is I don't know? You would think there was
somebody out there with some great new ideas that would improve and
advance search? We're in a void right now.

[John Bokma]

Post by cshields
To me it seems like Bing and Yahoo just copy and follow Google. The
results in the serps right now at Bing and Yahoo are almost exactly the
same results that Google had about 6 months ago, and I'll bet if you
could go to the future 6 months from now the results at Bing and Yahoo
will be almost exactly the same results as Google is showing right now.

Question is: do they copy Google, or do people first "game" Google and
then Yahoo and Bing?

Post by cshields
Neither Bing nor Yahoo have an origional idea in their heads. Google
isn't the great search engine they were 4 years ago

What has changed? Or is it just a gut feeling? Maybe you're right and if
it's worse it might be very well since more people know how to "game"
Google.

My impression is that it's better: I bump less into scraped Usenet posts
and more into posts on StackOverflow, the latter IMO of much better quality.

Post by cshields
to take their place and become the new top search engine. Now there is
nobody eager or ready or willing to take Google's place as the new top
search engine. Why that is I don't know?

Very simple: money. How much is needed you guess to become a
/significant/ search engine? Don't forget that Google also has a very
significant part of the online advertising business in their hands. So
in a way your question is not: who can take Google's SE place, but who
can take back a /significant/ chunk of online advertising, enough to pay
for the development of a better search engine.

Your question is somewhat similar to: why doesn't a competitor of
Intel/AMD rise up and built a better processor...

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

Post by cshields
To me it seems like Bing and Yahoo just copy and follow Google. The
results in the serps right now at Bing and Yahoo are almost exactly the
same results that Google had about 6 months ago,

I have found all along that MSN/live/Bing or whatever it's called has
and still does give www.key-word-domain.*** significantly more weighting
than google ever has. (and I have had quite a few over the years)

The recent Google re-hash currently appears to be significantly better
on my new site than it has been since we re-launched back in September.
Hopefully this will continue to hold up....

[Fester Bestertester]

Post by www.1-script.com

Post by Fester Bestertester
Until last month Altavista search engine allowed phrase search by use of
quotes.
This has ceased. Now when quotes are entered in a search, the quote
marks are ignored and deleted when the results are shown.

Someone's still using Altavista? I had no idea. Why? I mean, there must be
a reason and I'm as much interested in knowing it as I'm interested in why
anyone would perform what appears to be live testing/debugging on a site
that, according to compete.com still gets around 1M visitors per month.

Support of quotes (until recently), the "-", "OR", "NEAR" operators, wildcard
(*) to name a few. Which gives me more control over search criteria.
Basically, Altavista results are less wasteful, "tighter" on-target, IME.

If there's other engines that support these features I'd like to know...

FBt

[John Bokma]

Post by Fester Bestertester

Post by www.1-script.com

Post by Fester Bestertester
Until last month Altavista search engine allowed phrase search by use of
quotes.
This has ceased. Now when quotes are entered in a search, the quote
marks are ignored and deleted when the results are shown.

Someone's still using Altavista? I had no idea. Why? I mean, there must be
a reason and I'm as much interested in knowing it as I'm interested in why
anyone would perform what appears to be live testing/debugging on a site
that, according to compete.com still gets around 1M visitors per month.

Support of quotes (until recently), the "-", "OR", "NEAR" operators, wildcard
(*) to name a few. Which gives me more control over search criteria.
Basically, Altavista results are less wasteful, "tighter" on-target, IME.
If there's other engines that support these features I'd like to know...

Google?
See: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861
You can also use: http://www.google.com/advanced_search