Altavista: focus on search and search-generated marketing

Originally published on EuropeMedia.net, 14/12/2001.

Online advertising sales have undoubtedly dropped over recent months, and the situation has been worsened by the terrorist attacks three months ago. In the third of a series of features, Duncan Parry talks to AltaVista UK about the effects of the downturn and their future plans.

Q: To begin, has AltaVista UK experienced a decrease in advertising revenue?

AltaVista: The advertising and media industry as a whole has experienced a decline in advertising revenue, which will obviously effect advertising investments in internet and online media. Last year, a large segment of advertising came from internet companies; this year we have seen more traditional companies come onto the web and investing in online advertising (Axa, BA, IBM, Fiat, etc). This is a positive sign for online advertising.

Research shows that 81 per cent of sites are found using search engines (Forrester, Internet User Monitor, 2001). AltaVista will continue to focus on its "search" strategy, as it enables us to offer our clients a powerful portfolio of advertising and marketing products which help drive consumers to our clients. We are confident in our portfolio of marketing offerings.

We have also just launched Express Inclusion in the UK and Australia, following a successful launch in the US. This service provides a simple way for small and medium sized businesses to submit their website addresses to AltaVista's index, ensuring rapid inclusion and weekly updates of specific URLs into AltaVista's index, and offers customers the ability to control their URL submissions through a personalised account management service.

Q: Lycos UK recently launched a redesigned site and Excite UK stated to EuropeMedia in October that they were planning a redesign and to change the audience they target (before their current difficulties emerged). Does AltaVista have similar plans?

AltaVista: AltaVista has a highly educated, affluent and loyal user-base. We are not changing our user-base. Our objective is to focus on helping people find information and it is not just limited to HTML pages; in fact we have launched several specialised search centers which help segment users by their searches. These search centres are very popular with advertisers, as they segment our users by the information they are searching. For example, travel search centre for flights and holidays, business search centres for comparing financial products.

Q: Recent press coverage has suggested that AltaVista's country specific web page index is several months out of date - except for sites that pay to be included. Is AltaVista looking to up date it's index more quickly in future, or are you looking to switch to a paid inclusion only model?

AltaVista: The UK search index currently lists 49 million pages and provides users with more search results than any of its competitors on country-specific searches. Information held on the world-wide web is catalogued in an index, our index is one of the important elements of our offering.

AltaVista categorically does not accept paid-for-placement in our index. Customers using Express Inclusion may have up to 500 URLs inserted into the index more rapidly and will have their pages refreshed weekly. Whilst Express Inclusion type programmes provide web marketers with additional control over URL submission, it does not affect the ranking or relevancy of individual sites. All URLs remain subject to AltaVista's objective relevancy algorithm and submission standard.

AltaVista has a new CEO, with strong business experience and leadership. We believe we have a winning strategy focused on "search" generated marketing, we are financially stable and have launched new revenue opportunities (see Express Inclusion above). In fact, AltaVista has launched the largest country-specific index across Europe.

Q: AltaVista boasts search options for images, MP3/Audio, video clips, partner search centres and the Looksmart directory. What's next?

AltaVista: We will be more relevant, and user specific - but this is not going to be enough! The information on the web is the tip of the iceberg. If we take into account all web-accessible information, such as web-connected databases, dynamic pages, intranet sites, etc., collectively known as "deep" web, there are 550 billion web-connected documents. There are billions of additional sources of data and information, which are not yet indexed by search engines. But all this information will require better techniques to better understand what people are looking for.

Q: As the number of UK broadband users grows, does AltaVista have plans to serve their unique search needs - for example a search option for streaming media broadcasts?

AltaVista: We are committed to offering an index for a wide range of information. We are always enhancing the file types we support and the media through which they are delivered.

Q: Some analysts have speculated that localisation services - e.g. locating the nearest Pizza takeaway via a 3G mobile and the local postcode - will be a popular use of mobile Internet search services. Is AltaVista looking to develop these sort of services?

AltaVista: We cannot provide plans of future product developments - but we are aware that users will "search" for information across different digital platforms. And in each search result, we will need to reflect the location and more importantly the specific culture background of our user. We already offer localised searches from our country web-sites, for example a user searching for "football" in UK will get very different results from a user searching for "football" in the US. The fact that AltaVista has launched the largest country-specific index across Europe demonstrates our strong commitment to being a search leader.

Thanks to AltaVista UK for their participation in this interview.