Getting indexed on AltaVista

[Wim Lockefeer]

Van Kalmthout, Frank wrote:
> 
> We are trying to get our website (http://www.gov.on.ca/MCZCR/archives)
> indexed on AltaVista.  We submitted out URL about a month ago, were
> told
> that "the robot has recorded the URL" and that "it would be indexed in
> a
> day or two,"  and still nothing has happened.  If you search "Archives
> of Ontario" a number of hits are returned, but none of them is our
> specific URL.
> 
> Does anyone have experience or have similar problems with AltaVista?
> Does anyone have any solutions, including a contact at AltaVista
> (which,
> I might add,  they don't bother to provide on their website)?
> 
> Thanks,
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Frank van Kalmthout
> Librarian,
> Archives of Ontario
> vankalf at archives.gov.on.ca
> http://www.gov.on.ca/MCZCR/archives
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had the same problem, so I asked them.  This is what they answered : 

>We appreciate your keen interest in Alta Vista.  Our apologies for the delay 
>in indexing your site -- either to add, change, or remove a deleted listing.
>
>Due to the tremendous response to Alta Vista, we are not able to refresh 
>our index as often as we would like.  Your URL update request has been 
>added to our files and will be updated on our next refresh of the index.  
>This is currently scheduled for the next couple of weeks.
>
>Thank you,   
>Alta Vista Technical Support   

Moreover, I remember to have read in a recent issue of a Belgian
internet monthly that Alta Vista rarely indexes more than a certain
amount of files per site.  They never index a complete site.  Netguide
(may 97) says "Submitted Wab pages are spidered in near-real time -
usually a day or so.  Nonsubmitted pages are visited by a continuously
crawling spider, and all pages are visited at least once every three
months." Finally, pages inside a frame-based site are never indexed by
altavista.


-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wim Lockefeer, Media Coordinator                  lockefeer at limburg.be
Provincie Limburg                              tel : +32 (0)11 237 528
Universiteitslaan 1, B-3500 Hasselt (Belgium)  fax : +32 (0)11 237 510