ysearchblog.com/archives/000264.html

Read Johns book, it was the business idiots that didn’t understand what people wanted from search, and lack of investment in actual search that killed it. I watched it happen, it was a sad and telling time, and in reality they were dead in the water before Google started reaching critical mass, so Google really benefited from the disenchanted AltaVista user base migration.

The Answers will be posted on the Blog.

The above concern was just posted on their Blog…
Lets see if that Mystey will be solved.

ysearchblog.com/archives/000241.html

This is an important footnote because AltaVista was the choice among professional Searchers because of its relatively huge database (for that time) although there was a lot of Spam – you would eventually find almost everything you needed. One interesting factor in its’ Algos was the AGE of a site -the older the better, helping it tremdously in the SERPs

Around 2001 there was a sudden sharp decrease in relevancy, although there were less spam sites to search through.

What is of grave concern is HOW did the “Google” of its day be allowed to atrophy to what is now a Yahoo afterthought?

Here is an archived chapter about AltaVista History
http://web.archive.org/web/19980210160743/www.altavista.digital.com/av/content/about_our_story.htm