# Google vs Alta Vista **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 17, 2002, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342 "2002-12-17T15:09:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/1 "2002-12-17T15:09:51Z")
How is it that Google has utterly eclipsed Alta Vista as the search engine of choice for so many people? I’ll readily admit that the annoying pop up ads and the horrendous page formatting problems that have been part of Alta Vista off and on over the past couple of years have been a nuisance, but it can’t be that alone. I do like Google’s cached pages, which allow you to view sites that have vaporized since being indexed, and there are times that I get the feeling that I get more hits from Google than from Alta Vista, making me believe that Alta Vista’s spiders are less industrious. But Google’s advanced search screen is rather limited in specification power compared to Alta Vista’s full-fledged boolean field. You can’t do a Google search for _(“hitchhiker” or “hitchhiking”) and “last” and (“title” or “book” or “paperback”) and not (“Adams” or “Galaxy”) and (“sleuth” or “detective”) and not “Milat”_\* Since at least half of the time that I go to a search engine I’m going to need Advanced Search to do anything useful, I tend to head for Alta Vista first unless I’m searching for images or newsgroup postings. What say the rest of you? - (aha, it was Brett Halliday) ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/2 "2002-12-17T15:35:24Z")
Googles power is in it’s ranking ability. They apparently pay attention when indexing and get the rank right. I use mulitple key words (more words narrow it), or put key phrases in quotes, and limit the complexity of the search. I have found things using google that has made jaws drop. ---
**Author:** ![Violet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ebca7d/32.png) [@Violet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Violet)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/3 "2002-12-17T15:36:38Z")
Been using Google first for quite a while. Someone recently posted [http://dmoz.org/](http://dmoz.org/) which I may start using because it does seem to cut thru the crap. A few years or so ago I liked Dogpile. ---
**Author:** ![unclviny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e274bd/32.png) [@unclviny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unclviny)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/4 "2002-12-17T15:39:57Z")
I use [www.ixquick.com](http://www.ixquick.com) , it kicks Google’s ass (former Googler). unclviny ---
**Author:** ![rexnervous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@rexnervous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rexnervous)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/5 "2002-12-17T15:59:34Z")
I love Google - the Google toolbar is the greatest tool for the 'net yet invented. Well, ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. Of course, I never have a need to search quite so specifically as AHunter - but by the time I’d have figured out that entire sequence of boolean I could have just done ‘search within results’ several times (even if it’s not as accurate). You have to go to school to learn that AH? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![brianjedi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@brianjedi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianjedi)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/6 "2002-12-17T16:48:16Z")
I can’t believe I used to search without Google. Anything I ever need to find, they can hunt down. It’s no surprise that “Google” is now a verb (i.e.-“Let me Google that.” “I’m Googling it right now.”) God, that sounds just like a commercial, doesn’t it. I swear I don’t work for them. -brianjedi ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/7 "2002-12-17T17:02:16Z")
I was a big fan of Alta Vista. Then I tried Google. Beats it hands down. It’s rare that anyone needs sophisticated Boolean operators, so Google’s lack doesn’t bother too many people. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/8 "2002-12-17T17:09:37Z")
For quite a while, Alta Vista was useless to me by ranking their sponsers first, any search for a book would yield about 50 hits for [amazon.com](http://amazon.com) first, then, buried amidst other commercial links, I might find info about the book. I understand it’s not doing it any more (I just checked: it’s now doing the “sponsered link” thing that Google does), but during it’s sell-out period, I switched to Google and got in the habit of not using Alta-Vista. Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/9 "2002-12-17T20:14:55Z")
I love Google, and one thing I especially love is that you tend to get better results searching Google for “my search terms site:whatever.com” than you get searching [whatever.com](http://whatever.com)’s own search engine for “my search terms”. ---
**Author:** ![Shade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@Shade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shade)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/10 "2002-12-18T01:11:12Z")
I used altavista. Then I tried google, it blew altavista away, so I’ve used google since. I just went back to altavista - it seems a lot better. Am I imagining that? The point is, few people bother to research a new search engine. Google was a _lot_ better than altavista (and had some cool features like spell check and newsgroups iirc) and enough people switched that everyone knew it was the new thing. As good as a new search engine (or old one) might be now, if its not that leap better, Joe Searcher won’t bother to find out. ---
**Author:** ![lothos2002](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/df788c/32.png) [@lothos2002](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lothos2002)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/11 "2002-12-18T01:44:31Z")
small hijack: What is going on with Ask Jeeves ([www.ask.com](http://www.ask.com))? I never used it, but recently tried it and got nothing useful, only a huge amount of ads for things that were not even remotely related!! On Google and Altavista, I prefer Google for the reasons Shade mentioned. Altavista just feels outdated somehow, and after their “sellout” phase, I just can’t be bothered to try again. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/12 "2002-12-18T06:10:20Z")
Altavista hasn’t nearly been able to keep up with adding web pages like Google has. According to figures I’ve seen online, Altavista’s database is languishing at less than a billion pages, while Google is up over two billion. As of June of this year, a search engine I’ve never used ([alltheweb.com](http://alltheweb.com)) appears to have edged out Google (when you’re talking about numbers this big, 20 million _does_ seem like a razor thin margin!) for the largest search database: > [@](#): > > AlltheWeb now searches 2,095,568,809 indexed Web pages versus the 2,073,418,204 Web pages listed on Google’s home page. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/13 "2002-12-18T06:19:02Z")
Currently on their respective front pages, the following figures are given for the number of web pages searchable: AlltheWeb: 2,112,188,990 Google: 3,083,324,652 However, I seem to remember that only about 2 billion of Google’s web pages count, or something odd like that. I think there’s more to it than this one figure. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/14 "2002-12-18T06:47:22Z")
Huh. I’d never noticed those tiny letters on the bottom of the Google page. Perhaps the 3 billion counts Usenet posts and archived pages that no longer exist? ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/15 "2002-12-18T07:02:26Z")
Yeah, you know, I’ll bet that’s it. I think that Google announced a huge increase in page count when they got those Usenet posts. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/16 "2002-12-18T07:05:13Z")
[An increase of 500 million](http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/pressrelease48.html), to be more precise. ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/17 "2002-12-18T07:10:52Z")
Google has a damned good search engine. Google ranks pages by a) keywords and b) how many sites link to those keywords. Google won’t explain their technology which I can understand. At the samt time you can do Boolean searches with google. Slee ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/18 "2002-12-18T20:05:36Z")
My reasons for using Google: 1. Sparse front page. I don’t need 200 little graphics and text boxes all lined up so they look nice in a browser that I _don’t_ use. Simpler is always better (and faster, more readable, more compatible, …) 2. Good search mechanics. Lots of pages and ranked well. I am shocked at how I can find those “couple of pages” only on Google. Even though they are still on the Web and years old. 3. Implicit “and” of keywords. If I type in 3 keywords I want pages only with all 3 of them \. I don’t want to type in any \ “+” signs. The only downside to me (and I do very fancy searches at times) is no wildcards ("?" and “\*”). One very depressing aspect of how the Web has turned out is how web page “designers” (hah!) think the opposite of #3 is good. A lot of sites I visit have less than 10% content/page now. Do these people have _any_ brain cells? ---
**Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-vs-alta-vista/143342/19 "2002-12-18T20:09:10Z")
Yep. But their bosses are desperate to squeeze revenues out of the sites, and some believe it’s all about content or unsubtle advertising.