Thread: Critique of Alta Vista. I noticed that one ranking service I cam across today had Alta Vista as the 5th favourite site in July. So was interested in this article cited on the Yahoo thread:
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New Review of Alta Vista- Sep. PC Magazine
AltaVista
Alan Cohen
The verdict on AltaVista: A heck of a search site but not much of a portal. New content, such as headlines from ABCNews.com, is continually coming on-board, but the parts do not yet make an
integrated whole. While other sites offer online communities, AltaVista provides a grab bag of tools, and only the search tools make visiting the site worthwhile.
AltaVista offers two ways to search for Web content--a traditional keyword search and a set of searchable directories licensed from LookSmart. You have 12 categories from which to choose, appearing as a list on the left side of the screen. You can search across all categories with a keyword or navigate through them. Choose a category, and a new set of subcategories appears right next to the original list. Click again and the choices get narrower still, until you reach a listing of relevant sites, each with a one- or two-line description. The process is quick and intuitive.
This is a more elegant approach than you'll find in Yahoo!, where you never see the entire hierarchy at any one time and you have to keep pressing the back button to see listings in previous categories. But Yahoo! offers much better integration, linking categories to on-topic chats and message boards, with greater depth in its listings.
And that's AltaVista's major flaw: The few services offered are not yet integrated, and many key features are missing altogether, such as chat, instant messaging, and message boards. Six content areas (Careers, News, Travel, Entertainment, Health, and Finance) are up and running, but each section is run by a separate provider and has a completely different look and feel.
AltaVista won't track your local sports teams, remember your favorite links, or remind you when it's Grandpa's birthday; the service offers no personalization features at all. Free e-mail is part of AltaVista's toolset, but the Web-based service is not well integrated into AltaVista. The e-mail is adequate but lacks some important features, such as filters, address groups, and a search capability. You'd be better off using Hotmail at Microsoft's site or using Yahoo! Mail.
AltaVista's search capabilities offer a compelling reason to visit this site. But once you've found what you want, there is little reason to stay.
Compaq Computer Corp., www.altavista.digital.com. AltaVista lets you search by category without losing your place in its directory
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