by Dave Stanford

Created on: September 02, 2010

Long before the days of "Google" internet users had a vast number of search engines that they would frequent on a daily basis. When the internet first gained popularity Altavista.com was one of the more popular search engines available and this site is still online today. The homepage of the site is very basic, but includes everything that a user would expect from a search engine. It is an excellent site that focuses on the main task of searching the web for specific words, items, or ideas.

There are three basic types of searches available on the homepage and these include web, images, and news. Not only can you search these categories, but you can also specify if you want to search for results only in the United States or worldwide. There is also an option multilingual search results versus just English and Spanish. If you select the advanced settings button you can filter on specific keywords and phrases as well as by time and date. The settings button also allows users to filter out certain content such as adult material that should not be viewed by children.

The homepage also has some other good links including shopping, travel, people finder and Yellow Pages to name a few. However, one thing that can be noticed if you click on most of these is that you're redirected to a Yahoo.com link. The reason being is that Overture Services, Inc. which acquired Altavista in February 2003 was then acquired itself by Yahoo in July of 2003.

In addition to the search feature of Altavista.com there is the Babel Fish translation tool. With this tool a user can enter text in a certain language and then have it translated as best as possible to an alternate language. Of course it will give the best match it possibly can keeping in mind that there needs to be proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Local dialects are also difficult to translate, but this tool may help someone out who is in need of a quick translation.

Altavista.com is also available in 28 different languages for different countries depending on where a user is located. This can be automatically detected or selected. The site is very easy to use and even easier to read as it has a plain white background without flashy ads or colors. The search works well and you can expect to get as many results as you would with other search engines such as Yahoo or Google. It doesn't have all of the features of these other websites, but is still a great search engine. Even after the take over by Yahoo Altavista.com has managed to maintain its own identity.

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