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AltaVista

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"Alta Vista" redirects here. For other uses, see Alta Vista (disambiguation).

AltaVista
Top: 2002–2013 AltaVista logo
Bottom: The AltaVista web portal in 1999
Type of site
Search engine
Available inMultilingual
FoundedDecember 15, 1995; 30 years ago (1995-12-15)
Headquarters
Palo Alto, California
,
U.S.
Key people
Parent
URLaltavista.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 2012-02-25)
AdvertisingYes
RegistrationNo
LaunchedDecember 15, 1995; 30 years ago (1995-12-15)
Current statusDefunct (July 8, 2013 (2013-07-08))
The AltaVista home page in 1996, showing the simple search interface

AltaVista (a contraction of alta + vista, meaning "high view" in the Spanish language), based in Palo Alto, California, was a web search engine. Launched in December 1995, it was the first "full text"/boolean searchable index of the World Wide Web.

Web traffic increased steadily from 300,000 hits on the first day to more than 80 million hits per day by 1997, making it one of the most popular websites at the time. However, traffic plummeted shortly thereafter due to competition from Google Search and others.[1] The site was acquired by Yahoo in 2003. In June 2013, the domain name was redirected to Yahoo Search.

AltaVista is credited with implementing the first CAPTCHA to prevent fraudulent account registrations and internet bots from automatically adding pages to the AltaVista web index.[2][3]

History

[edit]

AltaVista was created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) who were trying to showcase the company's hardware to make it easier to find files on the company's public network.[4][5]

Paul Flaherty came up with the idea,[6][7] along with Louis Monier, who programmed the web crawler, and Michael Burrows who wrote the indexer.[8]

The name "AltaVista" reflects the surroundings of their offices in Palo Alto, California.

AltaVista publicly launched on December 15, 1995.[9]

Ilene H. Lang was the first CEO of AltaVista; she was recruited by DEC to build its software business.[10]

At launch, AltaVista had two innovations that put it ahead of other search engines: It used a fast, multi-threaded web crawler, Scooter, that could cover many more World Wide Web pages than were believed to exist at the time, and it had an efficient backend database, TurboVista, running on advanced hardware.[11]

In 1996, AltaVista became the exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo.[12][13]

In 1997, it launched Babel Fish, a web-based machine translation application that translated text or webpages.[14]

In January 1998, Compaq acquired DEC for $9.6 billion, including $4.8 billion in cash and the remainder in stock, to acquire its server technology.[15] As part of the transaction, Compaq acquired AltaVista.[16]

In February 1998, AltaVista added free webmail.[17]

In May 1998, it ended its deal with Yahoo to provide search results.[18]

In August 1998, Compaq acquired the altavista.com domain name for $3.3 million and redirected the site; it had previously used altavista.digital.com.[19]

Until January 1999, AltaVista featured only a search engine on a "utilitarian" web page with simple yellow and orange graphics.[20] In January 1999, Compaq spun-off AltaVista and began a redesign of the site as a web portal to compete with Yahoo. Rod Schrock was named CEO.[21][22]

In February 1999, Compaq acquired Zip2 to enhance AltaVista.[23]

In June 1999, Compaq sold 83% of AltaVista to CMGI for $2.1 billion in stock and $220 million in cash.[24]

In July 1999, AltaVista began offering financial content.[25]

In August 1999, AltaVista began offering free dial-up Internet access.[26] It ended the offering in December 2000.[27]

In October 1999, the site, as well as its price comparison site Shopping.com, was relaunched. It then offered real-time traffic pictures, news, financial information, and entertainment.[20] It also increased staff from 80 to over 600 and launched a new tagline: "AltaVista: smart is beautiful". It aired television advertisements, including one with Pamela Anderson,[28] as part of a $120 million marketing campaign.[29]

In November 1999, AltaVista acquired RagingBull.com.[30]

In December 1999, AltaVista filed for a $300 million initial public offering; it was cancelled due to the end of the dot-com bubble.[31]

In 2000, according to Media Metrix, AltaVista was used by 17.7% of Internet users while Google Search was used by only 7% of Internet users.[32][11]

In October 2000, Rod Schrock resigned as CEO.[33]

In February 2002, AltaVista shut its webmail service; at the time, it had 200,000 users. The accounts were transferred to Mail.com.[34][35]

In November 2002, the website was redesigned again to include a pared-down front page and more frequent updates of indexed links.[36][37]

In February 2003, Overture Services acquired AltaVista for $140 million.[38]

In July 2003, Yahoo acquired Overture for $1.63 billion.[39]

In June 2013, the domain name was redirected to Yahoo Search.[8][40][41][42][43]

How it worked

[edit]

There were two major search modes: simple querying and advanced querying.

A "simple query" looked like `word1 word2 "phrase" -word3 +word4` which was interpreted as "(word1 OR word2 OR "phrase") AND NOT word3 AND word4". Words within double quotes were phrases: they must be adjacent in a document for the document to match the query. A "query term" was a word or a phrase.

An "advanced query" was an explicit Boolean expression. In advanced query mode, `and`, `or`, and `not` were interpreted as Boolean operators rather than as search terms. Advanced queries may have also included `near`: the words on either side of `near` must be close -- but not necessarily adjacent.

Both simple and advanced queries supported `host:xx.yy.zz` which queried only documents found on the hostname (web domain) `xx.yy.zz`. A pull-down menu allowed the user to restrict result pages only to pages in a particular language. In the advanced search, an input box allowed the user to restrict the results to pages last modified on a certain date, or within a range of dates.

AltaVista returned URLs ranked by its internal "relevance function". Each page contained 10 URLs. The user may click on "3", for instance, to get to the 21st-30th most relevant URLs. This differed from some other search engines, where the user could jump to only the next 10 or previous 10 URLs.

AltaVista logged user requests in a "query log" A request may consist of a new query or a new result screen for a previously submitted query. Each request included the following fields: Unix timestamp for the query; cookie (blank if the user had disabled cookies); query terms; result URLs; other user-specified query modifiers, such as a restriction on the result pages' language or date of last modification; metadata, such as whether the query was a simple or an advanced query, the browser the submitter was using, the IP address of the submitting host, etc.

AltaVista collected session information to study querying behavior. A "session" was a cluster of queries in a short time by a single user. Queries with the same cookie were assumed to come from the same user. For those 4% of queries in which the user had disallowed cookies, a cluster of queries coming from the same web browser on the same domain IP was treated as a session. This method was a poor substitute for cookies, particularly on large ISPs such as AOL, where the number of users sharing a single IP address could be around 10,000.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Ray, Eric J.; Ray, Deborah S.; Selzer, Richard (May 1, 1998). The AltaVista Search Revolution (2nd ed.). Osborne/McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-882435-7.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Bilton, Nick (July 1, 2013). "AltaVista. What's That?". The New York Times.
  2. ^ Wilson, R.J. "The Surprising Secrets Behind Those CAPTCHA Images". Urbo.
  3. ^ United States US6195698B1, Mark D. Lillibridge; Krishna Bharat & Martin Abadi et al., published April 13, 1998 
  4. ^ Parnel, Brid-Aine (December 18, 2012). "Search engines we have known ... before Google crushed them". The Register.
  5. ^ "AltaVista searches for consumers". CNET. May 7, 1996.
  6. ^ "Creator of AltaVista search engine dead at 42". NBC News. Associated Press. March 24, 2006.
  7. ^ Markoff, John (March 24, 2006). "Paul A. Flaherty, a Developer of Web Indexing, Dies at 42". The New York Times.
  8. ^ a b "Yahoo to shut down pioneering AltaVista search site". BBC News. July 1, 2013.
  9. ^ Lewis, Peter H. (December 18, 1995). "Digital Equipment Offers Web Browsers Its 'Super Spider'". The New York Times.
  10. ^ Young, Susan (May 24, 2017). "2017 Alumni Achievement Award Recipient". Harvard Business Review.
  11. ^ a b Tyson, Mark (December 21, 2025). "Search pioneer AltaVista's star shone bright with a clean and minimal UI 30 years ago — engine lost momentum after multiple ownership changes and the embrace of the web portal trend". Tom's Hardware.
  12. ^ Vaughan-Nichols, Steven (July 3, 2013). "Yahoo closes one-time Google rival Alta Vista". ZDNet.
  13. ^ Williams, Rhiannon (July 8, 2013). "Yahoo shuts down search engine relic AltaVista". The Daily Telegraph.
  14. ^ Shannon, Victoria (May 3, 2006). "The End User: The power of Babel". The New York Times.
  15. ^ Kanellos, Michael (January 26, 1998). "Compaq to buy Digital for $9.6 billion". CNET.
  16. ^ Dvorak, John C. (July 9, 2013). "AltaVista, the Biggest Fail Ever". PCMag.
  17. ^ Broersma, Matthew (February 11, 1998). "AltaVista to add free e-mail". ZDNet.
  18. ^ Hu, Jim (May 18, 1998). "AltaVista steps aside on Yahoo". CNET.
  19. ^ "Compaq buys AltaVista domain". CNET. August 11, 1998.
  20. ^ a b Kopytoff, Verne (March 27, 2000). "AltaVista Switches Web Portal Into High Gear / Revamped site adds new services". San Francisco Chronicle.
  21. ^ Hu, Jim (January 12, 1999). "Compaq's AltaVista strategy emerges". CNET.
  22. ^ "Compaq Turns AltaVista Loose". CBS News. January 27, 1999.
  23. ^ Napoli, Lisa (February 17, 1999). "Compaq Buys Zip2 to Enhance Altavista". The New York Times.
  24. ^ MENN, JOSEPH (June 30, 1999). "Gains Seen for Both Sides in AltaVista Deal". Los Angeles Times.
  25. ^ Borland, John (July 13, 1999). "AltaVista adds customized, financial services". CNET.
  26. ^ "AltaVista offers free dial-up Net access". CNET. August 12, 1999.
  27. ^ "AltaVista pulls plug on free Net access". CNET. December 5, 2000.
  28. ^ "Internet search engine AltaVista revamps site". Deseret News. Associated Press. October 25, 1999.
  29. ^ Hu, Jim (November 5, 1999). "Search rivals see AltaVista straying from its roots". CNET.
  30. ^ "AltaVista buys finance Web site Raging Bull". CNET. November 29, 1999.
  31. ^ Hu, Jim (December 17, 1999). "AltaVista files for $300 million IPO". CNET.
  32. ^ Patsuris, Penelope (October 20, 2000). "Don't Count AltaVista Out Yet". Forbes.
  33. ^ Mannes, George (October 19, 2000). "AltaVista Exec Departs; What Hath Rod Schrock Wrought?". TheStreet.com.
  34. ^ Richardson, Tim (February 20, 2002). "AltaVista cans Web mail service". The Register.
  35. ^ Weiss, Todd (February 22, 2002). "AltaVista to close free U.S. E-mail accounts next month". Computerworld.
  36. ^ Olsen, Stefanie (November 8, 2002). "AltaVista searches for a new image". CNET.
  37. ^ Glasner, Joanna (November 13, 2002). "AltaVista Makeover: A Better View". Wired.
  38. ^ Hansell, Saul (February 19, 2003). "Overture Services to Buy AltaVista for $140 Million". The New York Times.
  39. ^ Olsen, Stefanie (July 14, 2003). "Yahoo to buy Overture for $1.63 billion". CNET.
  40. ^ Stern, Joanna (July 8, 2013). "AltaVista Now as Dead as Dial-Up". ABC News.
  41. ^ McCracken, Harry (June 28, 2013). "This Time for Sure: AltaVista to Die". Time.
  42. ^ "Yahoo shuts down internet relic AltaVista". CBC News. Associated Press. July 8, 2013.
  43. ^ "Yahoo sends search engine relic AltaVista to Internet graveyard". National Post. Associated Press. July 8, 2013.
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