AltaVista gets Fresh!
AltaVista badly needed an infusion of creativity to stay fresh in the minds of its users and hopefully they have only just started.

At first glance the changes seem basically cosmetic; a new logo is obvious as well as the rather stark design. Among the notable exceptions is that their relationship with Overture has been shoved up a notch. It seems that the top 9 positions from Overture are now populating their search results: the first 4 positions are from Overture and the remaining 5 Overture listings are shown on the right, much the same as the Google AdWords program. Another change is the news function called News 2.0 which allows users to search for news content that is refreshed every 15 minutes. Minor changes include the ability to index .pdf documents and as well as an advanced searching option dubbed "More Precision".

To get listed on AltaVista (short of Overture), paid inclusion still seems to be the only sure way of attaining a desirable placement Once you are in its database AVista's ranking algorithm does not seem to be much different, at least as far as our latest placement reports show. This is despite the press release from AltaVista which notes that their search relevancy has increased 40% over the past few months. We will keep you abreast of any additional notable changes.

More news on this from: Boston.Internet.com | The Register | CNET.com

Pay-Per-Click and Paid Submission Pays Off
Well the big boys have weighed in and paid search engine results are obviously here to stay. Third-quarter reports are out:

• Overture had a 138% increase in sales,

• FindWhat.com recorded 125%,

• Ask Jeeves reported a 15% increase,

• LookSmart (to our disbelief) actually posted a 138% increase in sales as well

Does this spell the demise of the free search engine submission? We highly doubt it. Google is a prime example of how a free search results model can actually be profitable and hugely popular. There are just too many small businesses with minimal budgets and too many small sites that have zero interest in paying for placement. After all, someone has to index the rest of the Net.

Want more news on these stats?

If you currently hold an account with Overture then you likely received the official bulletin from Overture regarding their recent changes. The change is admittedly very annoying. Overture has now removed any indication of the bids for a placement under each result. The reason? There were too many automatic systems extracting the information from their site, thus slowing their service down. To view the information now you have to access their bid ranking tool. This tool requires that a user login using the random characters shown in an image (that automatic systems cannot read) below the login field. Once in, you merely enter the search phrase and the bids are revealed next to each current listing.

Hmm, do you suppose that this might just be a way for Overture to lease system access to the automated bid tools? You have to admire their business sense.

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META Tags: Once considered the means to getting listed on the major search engines, META tags have taken a back seat to the countless elements that search engines now consider when ranking your web site. The reason? Simply put, there were too many advertisers that were providing false content within their META tags to achieve unrelated placements. Since META tags are relatively invisible to the common web site visitor this worked beautifully for the less than ethical. Now the search engines are concentrating on factors that are not so easily manipulated; body text, link text, title tags, site maps, link popularity (how many sites link to you), link relevancy (how many related sites link to you) etc. META tags fall near the bottom of this list. They are counted but only in some search engines and they are only a very small piece of the puzzle.

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