Altavista is Back in Action

Anyone who was using the internet in the 1990s, like me, will fondly remember Altavista.com, the best search engine of that era.

I have just noticed that it is back in action and referring people to my site! It seems to have replaced referrals that have come from Yahoo. I guess that shouldn't be so surprising since Yahoo acquired Altavista in a roundabout way via Overture Services.

What is interesting to me is that altavista.com has come back and that almost all of the Altavista referrals (on my site) have come from Chicargo, Illinois. Anyone know why might be?

I have attached a couple of reports, one is simply the Top Referrers Report from http://RichardLees.com.au/Sites/Demonstrations which shows altavista suddenly appearing in Maya 2009. The other I have created using ThinSlicer showing the geographic location of the altavista users. You can do the same remotely on my site. Or, if you prefer, the default dashboard on http://RichardLees.com.au/Sites/Demonstrations has a top referrers grid at the bottom right of the dashboard, which is interactive, so you can drill down on Altavista or drill across to any other dimension.

I find it interesting participating and watching the competition between the big search engines. From the stats on my site, Google.com is by far the largest, with live.com enjoying a steady workload. By the way, the home page on the dashboard above shows the top referrers, but only for the last 5 months. If you want to see a longer range, simply drill up on the time dimension to All, then drill back down to month and you will see all months.