nasty surprise at AltaVista

[Michael Squires (michael)]

This happened to me a few months ago on AltaVista. The amusing thing was that
I was searching for "encode" and got back a bunch of Fortran stuff. So I
refined the search by adding "-fortran". Next thing I know I'm getting an
advertisement for some Fortran management tools!

Michael Lee Squires
Digital Library Champion



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shirl Kennedy [mailto:sdk at mindspring.com]
> Sent: Saturday, June 13, 1998 1:35 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: nasty surprise at AltaVista
> 
> 
> Aaaagh!
> 
> Just popped over to AltaVista to do a quick search in 
> response to a help-me
> message posted on another mailing list (and to distract 
> myself from the
> noise of the plumber at work on my bathtub drain...on the 
> weekend, at the
> higher "emergency" rates).  Someone was looking for statistics on the
> purchasing power of women.  Used the advanced search form and 
> typed in:
> 
> women and "purchasing power"
> 
> When the results came back, I was horrified to be confronted 
> by a pop-up ad
> for Always "feminine hygeine products!  Tried the search 
> again, just to
> verify what I had seen.  And there it was again, the dreaded 
> "Always" pop-up
> ad!  I can only surmise that it appeared in response to the 
> search term
> "women."
> 
> Is this something new?
> 
> Has anyone else seen an instance of this in response to other 
> search terms
> at AltaVista?
> 
> Does this mean I now need to disable JavaScript before searching on
> AltaVista?
> 
> Am I being overly sensitive to be grossed out by this?
> 
> Shirl Kennedy
> Internet Waves columnist
> Information Today
> Best Bet Internet
> http://www.ala.org/editions/openstacks/bestbet/index.html
> 
> 
>