AltaVista launches Prisma

(July 2 2002) AltaVista launches a new search technology helping searchers refine their searches. Pandia looks at Prisma and AltaVista's new innovation strategies.

The rise and demise of AltaVista

We have a soft spot for AltaVista. It might be based on tender memories of discovering a modern and efficient search engine one time in the early days of Web history (AltaVista was originally Digital's showcase for the use of new computers). It may also be due to its strong support for advanced searching.

At the moment, of course, few experts leaves the search engine much of a chance. Google has usurped the throne of the old giant, and AltaVista is now one of the small search engines, at least when it comes to the number of searches and searchers.

Given that the dot.com crisis never seems to end, AltaVista should be in trouble.

The role of innovation

We are therefore glad to say that AltaVista so far has refused to become a pay per click ghost portal like Excite and Go/Infoseek, and is instead investing in the only thing that can save them in the search engine rat race: innovation.

Innovation has been defined as new ways of doing things, and is often identified as the development of new or improved products, processes and services.

A successful search engine company must innovate in many areas. Its hackers and engineers must be able to develop a good search engine technology (i.e. coding a search engine that is scalable and that is able to deliver relevant, high quality results).

At the same time the Web designers must be able to design an easy to use interface that lets searchers find what they are looking for, fast and efficiently.

All technicians and marketers must strive to combine the technology with efficient usability, i.e. finding ways of presenting the underlying data that turns the visitors into better searchers.

Google has been very good at this. The combination of efficient search engine algorithms, a plain but efficient Web design, and a sensible way of presenting results has made it a true success story.

AltaVista's demise was mainly caused by two major blunders. Firstly it tried to become a we-have-everything-including-horoscopes portal. People interested in searching were not amused and soon went elsewhere.

While focusing on its portal features, AltaVista neglected its search engine technology. Like Excite and Go/Infoseek, it seemed that AV believed that searchers were not able to distinguish between high and low quality search results anyway, and that there was no use in trying to improve the underlying search technology.

But searchers did notice.

And although old habits die hard, more and more met friends talking about Google, "a search engine that brings me what I want, every time", and as soon as they had tried the newcomer, they never came back.

AltaVista resurrected?

Last year AltaVista came to their senses. As any marketing expert can tell you, it is easy to ruin a brand, but much harder to rebuild it. Still, AltaVista is trying, very hard, and is doing a very good job at it as well.

Last year it abandoned the portal strategy. Its plain and simple home page is now focusing on searching, and searching only.

At the same time the company decided to invest more in innovation, working hard to give searchers what they are really looking for: relevant information.

Innovation frenzy

Note that innovation is more than breathtaking new technologies developed in military laboratories. Small incremental alterations that improve the functioning of products as services are just as important -- for the individual company it may even be more important.

What makes a searcher choose one search engine in stead of another may be one or two small features.

So far AltaVista has made several minor improvements.

They have improved the search interface, increased the size of its multimedia index, integrated current news into standard search results, added so-called "dynamic abstracts" (descriptions) of search results, started revisiting selected non-commercial sites four times per day, and added "shortcuts" to fresh and "authoritative" resources.

As Krista Thomas, AltaVista's Director of Marketing-Communication, says to Pandia, these improvements are part of an ongoing parallel effort covering everything from the Web interface to the search engine technology. "We are working on improving the size, breadth, scope and freshness of the index," she says.

She tells Pandia that they will present several new features during the summer and fall of 2002, the first being the new AltaVista Prisma technology.

AltaVista Prisma

AltaVista Prisma is basically a new way of helping the searcher refine his or her queries in order to produce more relevant results.

The search engine scans the text of the top 50 of the regular search results and then selects the 12 most frequently occurring words (called "Prisma terms"). AltaVista then presents these new search terms in a box right above the regular search results.

All these search terms are in one way or the other related to the search term entered by the searcher, and they are generated by the search engine on the fly.

When a searcher clicks on one of these terms, it is automatically added to the original search query, and a new search takes place. The new search query is visible in the search field.

Note that AltaVista does not use its search directory to group results in the way AllTheWeb does with the Open Directory categories, nor does it group results in various categories as Wisenut or the old Northern Light.

Indeed, AltaVista underlines that the 12 Prisma results do not represent "buckets" of search results. They are neither human edited nor artificially generated sub-categories. Nor does AltaVista take user click-throughs into consideration when generating Prisma terms. Rather they are the words most frequently related to the users original search query.

The Prisma refine search facility is most helpful for general queries. It does not appear when you refine your search twice in a row or when your search has fewer than 20 results. When there are no Prisma terms, a "Back" link replaces them. Clicking the link will return you to your previous search.

The strength of association

AltaVista performs a Boolean AND-search by default (i.e. all words in the query must be present for a page to be included in search results). If the searcher knows this, he or she may actually use this feature to learn how to build more complex queries.

Krista Thomas actually makes a point of this. "AltaVista Prisma will show people the additional value of Boolean searching," she says. "It will teach them how to formulate better queries".

Prisma is not a substitute for AltaVista's strong support for advanced search features and true Boolean searching, however. It is more of a supplement, useful when you are searching for more general topics.

Prisma is clearly useful when it comes to focusing the query and narrowing down results. Given that AltaVista is not always able to present search results in the optimal order, the Prisma term may reduce the time spent on wading through irrelevant search results.

However, the main purpose of this new technology is not necessarily to narrow down results. The Prisma Terms may just as well help the searchers expand their view, adding new search terms that opens up relevant topics or terms the searcher had not originally thought of.

Jonathan Glick, AltaVista's Director of Internet Search Services, says that one important objective is to help people find related terms of data by showing them the full spectrum of resources available. Hence, if searching for a particular pop artist, you are to be given Prisma terms for lyrics, fan clubs, related artists etc.

If you search for "the Beatles", you will for instance get links to Prisma terms like "Band", "Beatles Pictures", "England", "George Harrison", "Rock" and "Songs". If you click on the Prisma term "Paul McCartney" you get another list of such terms, including "Discography", "Sir Paul" and "wedding". Hence you may use this feature to target information on McCartney's knighthood or his recent wedding, happenings you may even be unaware of.

As Glick says: "Traditional refinement technology helps you find what you know exists. Prisma aims at helping you find relevant information you did not know existed."

Beta test

AltaVista has beta tested the technology under the code-name "AltaVista Paraphrase". According to AltaVista this test was highly successful with users clicking on the AltaVista Prisma terms four times more often than they clicked on the present "Others searched for" feature on AltaVista.com. ("Others searched for" are alternative terms that appears when users enters a very general query -- e.g. "cars").

Having tested the new feature, we can easily understand why. The Prisma term are often surprisingly accurate, and the list of terms does often include additional information that may help you widen your search.

Whether this technology is as radically new as AltaVista would like us to believe is another matter. But again, incremental innovations are also important, and this feature does definitely strengthen the usefulness of the AltaVista search engine. Do try it out!

Prisma currently returns terms from English language pages on AltaVista's American, Canadian, British, Irish, Australian and New Zealand search sites. If most of the pages in a given result set are written in another language, there will be no Prisma results. AltaVista will add more languages in the coming months, however.

More search engine news...

The Pandia Post is our free bimonthly newsletter on Internet searching, search engines and directories.

We will give you the latest news from the world of Internet exploring, useful tips on how to improve your searching skills or search engine ranking, as well as information on the development of the Pandia Search Central.

We will never give your address to any other company or organization.