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###Intro### Altavista used to be the world's largest search engine, but then it went portal, and then it wasn't. A company then bought it and turned it into a Google style search engine, but... more

User Reviews

for altavista.com

Rating Summary based on 100 reviews

  • 5 Stars
    48
  • 4 Stars
    36
  • 3 Stars
    11
  • 2 Stars
    5
  • 1 Star
    0

Detailed rating

  • Quality of Help
  • Quality of Service
  • Speed of Service
  • 3.0
  • 3.0
  • 3.0
  • 51 of 51 Ciao users found the following review helpful
    Picture of AlexWales

    AlexWales

    User recommends the product

    Advantages Advantages Large database, powerful advanced search

    Disadvantages Disadvantages Not the biggest, lots of commercial distractions

    This one's a bit techy - and partly adapted from an essay of mine. But I suppose it might interest somebody! A few years back, around the time of the 'internet boom,' it seemed that there were two clear leaders in the searching arena. Yahoo was the choice of the masses, while anybody wanting to do some serious searching was pointed towards the mighty AltaVista. Yet between 2000 and 2002, the average number of users per month plummeted from 16 million to just 6 million. (Stats from a BBC News Online article). Now Google seems to be the first choice for all. The question is how does AltaVista ... more
  • 32 of 32 Ciao users found the following review helpful
    Picture of Squiggles

    Squiggles

    User recommends the product

    Advantages Advantages Uncluttered main search page, fast loading, generally accurate results

    Disadvantages Disadvantages Too many dead links

    Altavista.com is not a bad little search engine at all, the site itself is very uncluttered with very few images and mostly just related text links, so the pages load quickly enough. You can either search using the big search box at the top of the screen, or you can look through the various categories listed below it. The main search box gives you a few options, including whether to switch the family filter on or off and you can choose the language. You can also customize how your search results are displayed, to include various information such as description, web page size and URL, date last ... more
  • 12 of 12 Ciao users found the following review helpful
    Picture of darrenloud

    darrenloud

    User doesn't recommend the product

    Advantages Advantages Well respected, useful as a complete portal.

    Disadvantages Disadvantages Slow, full of advertising and dead links.

    Altavista is managed by 'Altavista The Search Company', based in the US. For many years this search engine has been the number one throughout the world. It has evolved from a simple meta-engine to a portal of directories, databases and banks of graphics and the like. Altavista could be described as a portal too, providing news and that sort of thing. I may sound like I love altavista, but I'm trying to give it a good hearing first. I personally don't get on with altavista at all. It used to be my favorite, as did it with many millions of people. I have sinced moved on to Google. Altavista has ... more
  • 8 of 8 Ciao users found the following review helpful
    Picture of stuartpeters

    stuartpeters

    User recommends the product

    Advantages Advantages Quick. Relevent results.

    Disadvantages Disadvantages Cant Search using questions.

    I, like many, had become addicted to GOOGLE. A couple of weeks ago I decided to return to a few of the Search Engines that I had commonly used prior to this. I was very impressed with Altavista. It is very simple and uncluttered, yet managed do its job extremely well. ~~Download Speed~~ This was one aspect of the site that really impressed me. It typically took less than 10 seconds, depending of course on the amount of hits. ~~Advanced Search Features~~ Altavista bore well in this part of its analysis. It is possible to completely customise your search, with options such as; -Description -Web ... more
  • 9 of 9 Ciao users found the following review helpful
    Picture of asyis

    asyis

    User recommends the product

    Advantages Advantages Good search, language trans

    Disadvantages Disadvantages Its loosing the race of popularity to google

    “You don’t need to tell the people that it is good or bad You just need to tell the people what is going right and what is going wrong” We have been talking lot of the Indian scenario and blaming some of the dotcoms for their poor performance have we looked at some of the major international players like boo.com, amazon.com who are facing a big financial crunch irrespective of giving a fantastic service. Looking at Amazon, every one knows that it is the best shopping sites for Books and nothing can beat its services, when first time I heard that a site like amazon is having a ... more

Product information

for altavista.com

Product Details

Type Search Engines & Directories
Domain Extension .com

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