AltaVista Sets New Leadership Benchmark with AltaVista Search
Revolutionary New Way to Search Makes it Faster and Easier to Get Exactly What
you Want from the Web
New York, October 25 - AltaVista today asserted its continuing leadership in
Web search with the unveiling of the New AltaVista Search, completely re-designed
to deliver what today's Web users want - direct paths to relevant results. Four
years since introducing the world's first search engine, AltaVista once again breaks
new ground with a powerful way for users to zero-in on precise results by type of
information. Based on the Web's most in-demand types of content, new AltaVista Focused
Searching gives users one-click access to search results along eight distinct dimensions:
Web pages, news, pictures, video, audio, discussion groups, directories and shopping.
The New AltaVista Search is one of several industry-leading services unveiled
today as part of the New AltaVista Network at http://www.altavista.com/.
Underlying the New AltaVista Search are several core-level technology innovations
that firmly extend AltaVista's leadership, specifically in the areas of scope, relevancy
and freshness. AltaVista Search debuted the world's largest index today, spanning
an unprecedented 90 percent of Web sites, 250 million unique pages and 25 million
multimedia objects. A powerful new relevancy formula brings "quality" pages to the
top of search results. And AltaVista's new "Living Index" crawls the Web "intelligently,"
recording how often pages are updated, to ensure AltaVista Search always has the
Web's freshest information.
"A new way for users to search smarter, combined
with the powerful core technologies to make it work, place AltaVista Search far
ahead of any other search site on the Web," said Greg Memo, vice president and general
manager of AltaVista Search. "The innovations introduced by AltaVista Search today
mark a dramatic step toward harnessing the Web's vast, but largely untapped, information
wealth for the benefit of users."
AltaVista Focused Searching
Unique to AltaVista Search, Focused Searching makes accessing the types of search
results users say are most important to them a simple, one-click procedure. A new
user interface based on tabs offers up the Web's most popular content and information
with unequaled directness and ease.
"The strategy behind Focused Searching
is simple: give users direct and immediate access to the types of information we
know they want," said Memo. "Everyday there are hundreds of thousands of new pages
on the Web, and users don't want to wade through hundreds of search results or pore
down through the layers of Web sites to find what they are after. By mirroring the
Web's most sought after information in our interface, we make it dramatically easier
to find exactly the information users are looking for on the first page. "
- Multimedia
Faster, more powerful PCs, broadband Internet access and savvier
users have made multimedia on the desktop mainstream. But finding that particular
song, video or image on the Web has never been more challenging. AltaVista Search
delivers more sight and sound than any other search engine, indexing more than
25 million photographs, videos and sound recordings. In addition to multimedia
material from the Web, AltaVista offers one-stop access to the largest private
collections of art and photography in the world through premier relationships
with Corbis and Getty. Like no other search engine on the Web, AltaVista provides
thumbnails for both still images and video clips on the results page, saving
users time. Audio search results are also enhanced by the inclusion of real
audio files from the CDnow library of music.
- Shopping
This year 77 percent of online users relied on the Web to research
purchases, up from 55 percent last year. The vast majority of online shoppers
choose a search engine as their first stop when seeking product or retailer
information. In fact, 20 percent of all search queries conducted on AltaVista
are product related. To better meet the needs of online shoppers, AltaVista
has introduced a specialized search specifically for shopping and online commerce.
When a query is entered, shoppers directly access information to cover every
aspect of the shopping process - from what to buy, where to buy it and the best
prices, to links to manufacturers' Web sites, product news, reviews and comparisons.
- News
One of the Web's greatest promises is keeping people informed about
the world they live in. But tracking down news on a particular subject usually
requires searching multiple Web sites. With the introduction of the AltaVista
News Releases Search, users now have direct access to up-to-the minute information
from the world's most respected news sources, including The New York Times,
The Washington Post, AP, Reuters and other news information providers.
- Discussion Groups
Communities, news groups and other online forums for
expressing personal viewpoints and opinions have transformed the Web into a
vast town hall. Easy access to the collective perspectives of millions of Web
users is a powerful tool for information seekers. Provided by new partner RemarQ,
the new AltaVista Discussion Group Search enables users to search for topics
of interest within tens of thousands of news groups, and message boards from
all over the world. Users can reap the benefit of the viewpoints of others,
express their own ideas and engage in electronic dialogue with those who share
their interests.
- Directories
When AltaVista Search users want the benefit of a human opinion
on a Web page, they can now turn to the new AltaVista Directory, a vast collection
of pages reviewed by users from around the world. Based on Netscape's Open Directory
Project (ODP), the AltaVista Directory consists of more than one million Web
pages that draw on the efforts of thousands of volunteers to review and categorize
these sites into topics of interest. In addition to the wealth of information
from ODP, AltaVista has incorporated other sources of quality content from iAltas,
to ensure the AltaVista Directory is the most comprehensive and freshest on
the Web. Information from iAtlas also provides the focus of the new Company
Fact Sheet - a way for users to get detailed background information on the company
mentioned in the results. This innovative capability is available for both directory
results and Web results.
- News
One of the Web's greatest promises is keeping people informed about
the world they live in. But tracking down news on a particular subject usually
requires searching multiple Web sites. With the introduction of the AltaVista
News Releases Search, users now have direct access to up-to-the minute information
from the world's most respected news sources, including The New York Times,
The Washington Post, AP, Reuters and other news information providers.
- Discussion Groups
Communities, news groups and other online forums for
expressing personal viewpoints and opinions have transformed the Web into a
vast town hall. Easy access to the collective perspectives of millions of Web
users is a powerful tool for information seekers. Provided by new partner RemarQ,
the new AltaVista Discussion Group Search enables users to search for topics
of interest within tens of thousands of news groups, and message boards from
all over the world. Users can reap the benefit of the viewpoints of others,
express their own ideas and engage in electronic dialogue with those who share
their interests.
- Directories
When AltaVista Search users want the benefit of a human
opinion on a Web page, they can now turn to the new AltaVista Directory, a vast
collection of Web sites and pages reviewed by people from around the world.
The new directory is based on Netscape's Open Directory Project (ODP), which
has more than one million Web pages that are reviewed by human editors globally.
In addition, the AltaVista Directory will soon include more than one million
high quality, unique URLs from Looksmart, which uses 180 professional editors
to review sites. With more than two million pages, the AltaVista Directory will
easily be the largest, most comprehensive and freshest on the Web.
The
Directory also includes detailed background information on any company mentioned
in the results, through the new Company Fact Sheet capability. This innovative
capability, made possible by information from iAtlas, is available for Web search
results.
Technology Leadership
On the subject of AltaVista's technology leadership, Greg Memo said: "Since achieving
the distinction of becoming the world's first Web search tool in 1995, AltaVista
has continued to lead the industry with groundbreaking technological innovations.
Today, yet again, AltaVista Search is raising the search technology bar in terms
of index size, relevancy of results, and index freshness."
- Largest Index The new AltaVista Search has dramatically expanded its coverage
of the Web, spanning an unprecedented 90 percent of all Web sites, and indexing
in excess of 275 million un-duplicated pages and multimedia items. It is the
largest index in the world.
Unlike other search engines, AltaVista Search
weeds out duplicate and near-duplicate pages with a patented duplicate elimination
technology. Consequently, users are spared sifting through search results which
contain multiple references to the same result. To achieve an index of more
than 275 million unique pages, AltaVista Search crawls about 350 million pages
in total.
- Most Relevant Results
"Providing quality results is always our top priority
- we pride ourselves on the fact that users can find what they are looking for
on the first page of results", said Memo. "We deliver the most relevant results
in the industry on the strength of a revolutionary new technology that characterizes
every page we index more thoroughly than any other web search engine."
Called "AltaVista Page Knowledge," this technology analyzes the content
of the page, its meta-tags, the page's connectivity, any referring anchor text
and other pertinent information. No other Web search engine takes all these
variables into account when measuring relevancy. By combining the various elements
of AltaVista Page Knowledge into one powerful relevancy ranking formula, AltaVista
offers users the highest certainty of a satisfying result on the first page.
- Freshest Results on the Web
With the AltaVista Search "Living Index,"
users are assured that the AltaVista index is not only the largest but also
the freshest. The Living Index ensures that the Web pages which change most
often are crawled and indexed most frequently. In addition, the Living Index
becomes aware of newly-created Web sites whenever a new domain name is registered.
As a result, AltaVista search is able to make its Freshness Guarantee: no search
site will have fresher results than AltaVista.
Selecting a Trusted Retailer
AltaVista Shopping.com closes the loop on the shopping process by allowing users
to compare prices, availability and ratings on hundreds of online retailers, find
directions to a local retailer, or simply buy directly from AltaVista Shopping.com.
To help shoppers find the best online merchants, consumer reviews of many
online retailers are provided by BizRate.com, the leading independent merchant rating
service. Shoppers can easily locate products at hundreds of popular online merchants
including www.amazon.com, www.furniture.com, www.costco.com, www.netgrocer.com,
www.drugstore.com, www.staples.com, www.petopia.com, and www.etoys.com.
About AltaVista Company
AltaVista Company is the premier media and commerce network offering Internet users
up-to-the-minute news, live video, content, search and shopping resources. The company
integrates unique technology, products and services to deliver relevant results
faster for both individuals and businesses. By combining distinctive 'best of the
Web' relationships with personalized service, the AltaVista Network at http://www.altavista.com/
creates the smartest Internet experience. AltaVista is building on its heritage
of technology and innovative leadership, offering informative services including
AltaVista Live!, AltaVista Search, AltaVista Shopping.com, AltaVista Local, and
FreeAccess combined with the AltaVista microportal. AltaVista is a majority-owned
operating company of CMGI, Inc. (CMGI), Andover, Mass. Compaq Computer Corporation
holds the remaining minority stake in AltaVista.
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AltaVista is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Shopping.com and Homebase are trademarks of AltaVista Company or its affiliates.
Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
their respective companies.