Altavista vs. Altavista

[Greg Dean Schmitz]

On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, N. TOMAIUOLO, INSTRUCTION LIBRARIAN, CCSU wrote:

> My personal home page has a link to www.altavista.com and when I go there I 
> receive excellent search results.  I noticed, however, that a bold disclaimer 
> appears at www.altavista.com that reads:
> AltaVista Technology Inc. is not affiliated with Digital Equipment Corporation, 
> AltaVista Internet Search Software Inc. or the AltaVista Internet Search 
> Service.  The AltaVista Internet Search Service may be found at 
> www.digital.altavista.com

When you type in your search at http://www.altavista.com, you'll notice 
that there it says "Search with Digital's Alta Vista".  This type of 
search engine line can be put on anyone's WWW page, most search engines 
offer this feature.  It appears that the folks at Altavista Technologies, 
which is indeed not affiliated with Digital, got tired of people asking 
how to search their site, so they put up that search line as a way of 
diverting search engine traffic to Digital, while allowing people to do 
their searches at the same time.  

So, the answer is "Yes, www.altavista.com is not the address of the Alta 
Vista search engine, but Yes, you can still use that address for simple 
searches."  I prefer not using the www.altavista.com address because I 
often need more options that what it is offered by a simple search line.

Greg

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Greg D. Schmitz			|	Email:  schmitz at winnefox.org
Oshkosh Public Library		|	Phone:  (920)236-5219 x4814
Oshkosh, WI 54901-4985		|	Fax:	(920)236-5227
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