Pacific Access, a wholly-owned Telstra subsidiary which maintains the telco's White Pages, Yellow Pages, Whereis and GOeureka directories, told ZDNet Australia that GOeureka queries the Alta Vista site operated out of the US in real time. Therefore GOeureka queries are made against the same database as www.altavista.com, itself recently criticised for slack listings updates. Last modified searches at altavista.com also date back to July.
"Pacific Access maintains the GOeureka site, with search content provided predominantly by Alta Vista. We're concerned about recent media reports surrounding Alta Vista's content updates, and will continue to look for ways to enhance the site and in particular its local search capabilities." Ian Leuchars, general manager of Pacific Access Online Sites, told ZDNet Australia.
Alta Vista's out-of-date listings have been linked to the site's plummeting popularity, which has seen unique visitors hit the skids, with 6.8 million reported in September 2001 compared to13.9 million for the same period in September 2000 - according to Jupiter Media Metrix figures.
GOeureka's unique users have remained pretty static over the last few months of stale listings availability - with Nielson NetRatings recording GOeureka's unique audience in September 2001 as being 444,212, compared with 422,437 in June 2001.
Although monthly database updates by search providers are considered acceptable, LookSmart Australia -- which claims to be the number one search provider in the country reaching 70 percent of Australian Internet users -- says it updates its database -several times weekly".
With a little over 100,000 Web sites in its Australian database, LookSmart Australia CEO Damian Smith says -our content is very fresh...it's definitely an area we've focussed on". Fresh search results are -an important source of competitive strength," he added.
Stephanie Olsen contributed to this report.
Telstra cripples everything they manage.
Telstra is company with a huge attitude problem.