Meeting AV.

[MakeMeTop]

I have been invited to a meeting with AV in London in 2 weeks with a very senior member of AV's management to "discuss ways of improving our relationships with SEOs and seeing how we could work closer together...".

I assume that this is shorthand for "how can we persuade you to push our paid inclusion plan.."! But, nevertheless, I think this is a pretty important step forward. It appears I might also be meeting other SEs in the near future.

Without this turning into a moaning session (we all know how much AV has lost ground - and so do they) what constructive things would you like brought up?
:D

[markymark]

Barry,

I think the most important one is to point out that the whole index should be refreshed more often. It may be once a week for paid inclusion pages, but once every four months or so for the rest just leaves AV with a feeling of irrelevancy.

There is also an ongoing spidering problem with Scooter that needs to be addressed. It is still hammering many sites on an almost daily basis. This would be tolerable if any of the pages spidered ever showed up in the index.

Furthermore I feel that gimmicks like pictures and extra links at the bottom of listings are not helping matters at all - it smacks a little of desperation.

AV is still a strong brand among web users both new and experienced. It would be a shame for them to continue to shed users by providing irrelevant, outdated or gimmicky results when what is needed is maybe a return to the two-week update. I used to love those AV update threads at SEF.

[Kal]

Hey Barry

1) What markymark said.
2) Tell AltaVista that the stale index issue is starting to wear thin with SEO's and definitely affects their decision on whether paid inclusion is worthwhile. Personally, I haven't been recommending paid inclusion to any more clients since I heard heard how long since a refresh had been done.
3) SEO's are suspicious of AV's partnership with a known SEO. Find out what that's all about - is it a long term thing? Why do they let this SEO contact all our clients?
4) In the opinion of this SEO, AV is no longer delivering worthwhile traffic to my site or the sites of my clients (with or without paid inclusion). Unless they boost their relevancy and popularity somehow, I fail to see why SEO's like us should promote them.
5) Encourage AV to visit this forum often if they are so keen to learn what SEO's think of them.

Thanks Barry and have a great booz.. I mean meeting! :cheers:

[sanity]

What markymark and Kal said goes for me too - refresh your index regularly!!!

Our client's sites used to get a lot of good targetted traffic from AV which has all but dried up and been replaced. I hardly bother with it now bar submitting sites.

FWIW - I would consider recommending paid inclusion, if needed, if the DB was fresh (ie Inktomi). As it stands it's a waste of money...

If AV was to pick up as it was before I'd be more than happy to use/recommend it again.

sanity

[Great-1]

I've had a fair bit of contact with AV myself recently. The 2 guys I've spoken too (one in the UK, and one in the States) were both really helpful, so hopefully you'll be able to get a lot of good out of this meeting.

As for what I think should be discussed, I think the others have already summed it up.

[nuzelonde]

AV: Their funding is drying up, they are plummeting in usage and their search results are rubbish.

More importantly: if you can Google, why would you AltaVista?

[Kal]

What ever became of the meeting Bazza?

[MakeMeTop]

Well - they e-mailed me with 2 possible dates - and then never came back to me with a definite time. So - still waiting for a firm date :(

[glengara]

So you were spidered but not indexed?

[Alan Perkins]

LOL!

That was inspired glengara! :green: