Death of Altavista and AllTheWeb
 

Sorry if this has already been posted.
Gives a great overview of the history of recent events at yahoo, inktomi, alltheweb, and altavista.

Discuss.

Or, ignore and go talk about tits and *******.

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The death of AltaVista and AlltheWeb
Source: Pandia.com

Yahoo! will end the development of the AltaVista and AlltheWeb search engines, but will keep the sites.

Yahoo! did need a search engine. Yahoo! had found that searchers preferred regular search engine results to hand picked directory listings. Regular search results at the Yahoo! site was therefore delivered by Google. As a long term strategy it does not make sense to rely on your main competitor in this way.

Yahoo! clearly needed an alternative, and bought the three search engines. However, the costs would be enormous to keep three different development teams developing three different search engines and it would make more sense to try to merge the competences acquired, even if there were cultural differences and geographical distances (The AlltheWeb team is in Norway).

Overture had already started integrating the development teams of old timer AltaVista and the Norwegian AlltheWeb search engine. It is now clear that Yahoo! decided to go one step further, and replace the old search engines with a brand new one: the Yahoo! search engine. In February Yahoo! replaced Google with the new search engine at their own Yahoo! portal. The new search engine showed great similarities with the old Inktomi search engine, as many of the listings where the same.

The search engine algorithm -- i.e. the process that decide the order of search results -- was new, however, and the fact that Yahoo! sent out a new search engine robot crawling the Net for sites and pages proved that Yahoo! was indeed building a new search engine.

Yahoo! had been criticized for sticking to Google for too long. It now, appears that they had been biding their time, testing the new search technology. It would have been suicide for Yahoo! to launch a search service that did not deliver the quality their users have come to expect. Google has proved, once and for all, that the quality and relevance of search results is essential for success in this market.

So what will happen to the old search engines? We have had our doubts about the quality of the Inktomi search engine. By all means, it could deliver decent results, but has been plagued by spam and irrelevant listings. AltaVista, once the king of the hill, continues to deliver good results, even if the database is a bit small. AlltheWeb, on the other hand, has proved itself worthy as Google's match, both as regards relevance and scope.

It is therefore with a certain sadness we have to announce that the AltaVista and AlltheWeb search engines are going to die. In the near future Yahoo! will replace these unique search engines with data from the new Yahoo! search engine.

Yahoo! will keep the two sites as experimental portals. Hence there will be differences as regards the support for advanced searching etc. But the core technology will be new. The Inktomi search engine never had its own portal. It now delivers data to sites like MSN and HotBot. Whether it also will be replaced by Yahoo! search is unclear at the moment, but most likely.

Was this really necessary? Did Yahoo! need three search engines in order to develop a new one?

Probably not. We guess the original plan was to develop Inktomi into the new "Google killer". Yahoo! soon realized, however, that they also needed a third service, in addition to the old Yahoo! directory and the new Yahoo! search engine -- a service that could bring in real money.

They therefore bought Overture, the most important pay-per-click text ad search engine in the world. As an added bonus they got AlltheWeb and AltaVista and a lot of clever search programmers and marketers.

By doing so, they also stopped MSN from buying these technologies, thus forcing Bill Gates & Co. to develop a brand new search engine from scratch.

i knew that , but its too bad. I like those sites.

So basically inktomi is about to take over the world.

I knew a big change was brewin when I started seeing "Yahoo! Slurp" in my logs.

Well, half the world anyway... Damn good thing I have lots of number one inktomi listings. :)

Then M$ will be forced to enter the battle with their own thing so it will only be one third of the world.

I have heard that Yahoo is going to implement some pretty fucked up pay-for-play systems in their search results though. Anybody know anything about that?

M$ and IBM are already developping their search . I don't know why the fuck this guy post it for the 2nd time today .

Yahoo will ask pay per click . Fuck them they will die.

Yes there was a post explaining all that earlier this week . They want us to pay 15 cent per hits no matter what . fuck thoses bitches . Yahoo will kill himself

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...ighlight=yahoo

here you go fellas

This is ridiculous (insane would be more appropriate). I knew that one day or another the "free search engine" would be a thing of the past.. but this!?.

It's going to be like Inktomi

You pay to include it in the search, but no guarantee about the ranking.

Then it's 0,15 cents per click.

When you initiate your Site Match subscription, a non-refundable annual review fee is charged for setting up your account and for quality review of your pages.

Once your pages are accepted into the program, a cost-per-click fee is charged for each lead driven to your site.

URL Submission (non-refundable annual fee, per domain)

First URL: $49
Next 2-10 URLs: $29 each
11th URL and beyond: $10 each

Cost-Per-Click Fee
Tier 1 Categories ($0,15):
Adult
Automotive
Books
Computers & Software
Dating
Education & Career
Jewelry & Watches
Music & Video
Office
Other
Reference
Sports & Outdoors
Toys & Baby Equipment

Tier 2 Categories ($0,30)::
Apparel
Electronics
Financial Services
Flowers, Gifts & Registry
Health, Beauty & Personal Care
Home & Garden
Professional Services
Real Estate
Telecom & Web Services
Travel

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This is the new Yahoo PFI program explained in detail.

Just when they had me convinced that the "new" Yahoo PFI was going to somehow be different than the old Inktomi PFI, this proves that Yahoo has not learned anything.

Look at this quote:

"Choose Pages for Inclusion: Submit a few pages of content or include your entire site to maximize your exposure."

Yahoo is admitting here that if you want to get your whole site indexed, you need to PAY to include all that content. In other words, if you submit just a "few pages", those are the only pages that will get indexed.

This means that, just like Inktomi, they care more about the quick buck than spidering the whole web and refreshing it often to provide the best possible index. The folks at Yahoo know that that it's deceptive to allow paid listing in the "pure" results, but they also know that 80% of people click on the natural listtings... and they just cant resist the temptation to monetize it.

... just wait until the FTC knocks on their door with deceptive advertising claims. Perhaps that's the only way they will be forced to change their ways.

"How much does it cost to use Site Match?
Site Match subscribers who submit less than 1,000 URLs pay an annual review fee, which breaks down as follows:
First URL: $49
URLs 2-10: $29 each
URLs 11-999: $10 each

Subscribers then pay a fixed cost-per-click for each customer lead that clicks on their listing. For most content categories, the cost-per-click is $0.15, while select categories are priced at $0.30 per click."
Adding it it's one thing, you will have to pay per click too. I guess some people can afford it.

Altavista can't die!!!!!!!! :(

15c per click is outreagus.......no way noone is gonna pay that as lowest bid......

15 cents a click? Yah, right, this isn't 1997.

But Altavista had its time; babelfish was a great tool back in the day. oh well, see yah later

-alec

that article looks like it was written by a 12 year old.

any legit source to confirm this?