Obtaining high rankings in Altavista is very difficult considering that Altavista currently has one of the largest Internet databases of all the search engines. Altavista is owned by Digital (recently acquired by Compaq) and opened in 1995. Recently, Altavista changed hands again to new owners, CMGI, and has plans for an initial public offering in the near future.
Website Information
Altavista supports various META tags, with focus on the Keywords and Description META tags
Spidering
Altavista will spider or follow all links it finds on your website and index them into their database. You can control the degree of spidering through a standardized robots governing file or META tags.
No Spam/META Abuse
Altavista will not tolerate websites that try to "spam" their index with the same page over and over (ie: too many doorway pages will get you blacklisted). Additionally, repeating words often in your META tags may get your site demoted or removed from Altavista's index.
Additional Information
Altavista supports full page indexing which includes all ALT image tags , image maps, and frames . In addition, any in-line text and actual content on your pages are indexed with the exception of HTML comments. Also, upper and lower case are recognized differently with Altavista, so select your keywords with care.
Real Names Given Priority
Before any results are returned, Altavista attempts to match keywords to Real Names , a commercial keyword system where buyers reserve keywords to be associated to their website or organization. Obtaining a Real Name will help boost your rankings to the top of Altavista, however, at a price (Real Names charges $100/year/keyword).
Popularity Counts
If lots of websites link to your site, then your site will be ranked higher in AltaVista's rankings.
Ranking Process
Altavista ranks sites based on the following criteria (in order):
Ranks any Real Names Keywords (see above for info) first
Altavista has special reserved triggers which can help assess your rankings and positioning once you've submitted your website to Altavista. The following are recommended readings for determining your success with search engine marketing:
