When was the Searcher Born?
Altavista was born in 1995 as the first full-text search service in the Internet.

How did the Searcher born?
Altavista (whose meaning is “a sight from the above”) was inspired by the creation of some big ideas of a group of experts fascinated with following the information. During the spring of 1995 the scientists from the Research Laboratory from “Digital Equipment” in Palo Alto, California created a new way of storing all the words from the HTML Internet pages in a fast index where that information could be searched. This lead to the development of Altavista, the first full-text data base where information could be searched in the World Wide Web.

How did it evolve? (Brief history of the Searcher)
The company added multilingual searches with a match in 25 languages in 1997; it released 20 local sites for countries between 1999 and 2001; it released a matched search for multimedia files (audio, images, video) in 1999; it was the first search engine to introduce the free search of news in 2001 and presented Altavista Prisma™, its powerful assisted search tool in 2002.

Since April 2003, Altavista is a part of Overture.

Where is its central office/ headquarters?
Altavista- 1070 Arastradero Road-
Palo Alto, CA 94304
P: 650-320-7700-- F: 650-320-7720
www.Altavista.com

What’s its philosophy?
Altavista’s main mission is to provide the world a global access to information and to set the standard in searching technology and how people find information.
Organization chart and personnel (departments, number of employees, etc.):
James Barnett, President and general director
Fred Bullock, assistant general director and marketing director
John R. Ellis, assistant engineering and operations general director
Kevin Eyres, International Manager
Susan Marsch, General Attorney, Business and Legal Affairs assistant director, Corporate secretary.
David Bills, Operations assistant director
Jan Pedersen, Ph.D., Chief scientist.
Doug Young, Chief Technology Director of Altavista Internet

What services does it offer?
Webs, images, MP3/audio, directory and news searcher. It also offers other tools such as a translator, filter, yellow pages services, people searcher and a prices comparison of different products trough Dealtime (http://Altavista.dealtime.com).

What are the criterion used for ordering the results of a search?
The current data base is ordered according Altavista’s relevance formula. In October 1999 it started to group the results by sites, in a way that only one or two web registrations appear in the main page. This way of grouping is based on the exact name of the host. For example www.dominio.com and dominio.com Would be two different web groups. In order to see other pages of the same group, we should click in “More pages of www.dominio.com”.

In the advanced search the results are ordered by their relevance. By putting one or more words in the “order by” box we get those main criterion to order the results. In November 1999 Altavista started not to group the advanced search results unless the user wanted, indicating it in the corresponding box. In February 2002 the restriction was activated again, showing only one or two pages per site. (More information about domains: Domain World, Buy Domain Name, America Domain Registration).

Facts about the data base we use:
Altavista has experimented with several data bases. It has showed results from “Ask Jeeves”, its own data base from Usenet, RemarQ Usenet, Overture’s payment positions , RealNames Internet Keywords and LookSmart’s categories. In December 2002, most of these additional data bases were no longer used, except for Overture’s payment position that appeared at the beginning and at the end of the page as “Sponsored Matches”. Altavista owns images, MP3/audio, video and news data bases.
Yahoo! used Altavista’s data base before using Inktomi’s and later Google’s. MSN changed from Inktomi to Altavista in September 1999 but returned to Iktomi in December.

How many links does your data base own?
1.689 millions

What are your sources of incomes?
Altavista’s main source of income if advertising. Appart from this Altavista has given licenses of its searching software to more than 1.200 of the companies, sites and leading companies in the electronic commerce of the world. Kind of advertising allowed in the Searcher: banners campaigns, click payment, etc. Altavista offers different solutions for the advertising campaigns that want to use the searcher.

Main Page

Altavista’s main page offers excellent graphic and text opportunities:

- Homepage 70, known as the “magic box”, is an integrated unit that provides the advisors a wide range of visibility and public-reach.

- Links in the Market Section- a text exclusive advertising space.

-Search results page:

The search results page allows the advertisement to reach those clients that are looking for themes, keywords, or relevant text sequences.

The advertising spaces reach the users in a 'Searcher' mode trough graphic and text units: horizontal banners (468x60 pixels), vertical banners (160x600 pixels), “Extend your search” (text space), “Try these tools” (text spaces linked category).

Search centers
Altavista offers the users specialized search centers to help them polish their consults and offers the advertisers a simple way of reaching a specific users group: horizontal banners (468x60 pixels), vertical banners (120x240 pixels), “Integrated Spaces” ( in association with Altavista).

Web Marketing Services:
· Quick Inclusion: allows to add a URL to Altavista’s data base on two working days.
- Trusted Feed: allows the associates to improve significantly their presence in the search in Altavista. The associates can decide which pages will be included in the data base where the Altavista’s searches are based on, and they may specify detailed information about the page including titles, descriptions and key words. These elements are used to decide the classification and order of the pages in the search results as web as the way they will appear in the page’s list.
- Lists Improvement: allows to add any of the following functions to the web pages that have been included in Altavista’s index: logo, icon, (advertisment) coletilla publicitaria (can be updated in any moment) and text links.
Personalized Solutions from Altavista offer personalized solutions that fit the client’s needs in the best way that it is possible.