AltaVista opens NZ-only website

AltaVista has become the first global search engine company to open a site in New Zealand.

The company's worldwide site at www.altavista.com included more than 100,000 local web pages, but www.altavista.co.nz, which went live last week, has indexed around 2.9 million New Zealand web pages.

The site joins about 20 country specific sites that AltaVista has established around the world. A similar site serving Australia was launched last October.

Australia and New Zealand managing director Mel Bohse said AltaVista's worldwide site was already attracting 200,000 unique visitors from New Zealand each month.

"We knew we already had an audience here," she said.

AltaVista draws 80 per cent of its revenue from online advertising, but it has also licensed its search engine software to about 900 customers.

Ms Bohse said the decision to enter New Zealand had been made a year ago but the process of indexing the pages took only a week.

She was confident that the local advertising market was large enough to support AltaVista, and she predicted other global search engines would follow.

"We don't listen to the industry gossip of doom and gloom. We know what's here for us."

The company will be represented in New Zealand by Webmasters Network, which is owned by Auckland-based new media company Brave New World.

Testing local search engines


A search for "cars" found:

www.altavista.co.nz: 128,470 web pages.

www.Searchnow.co.nz: 20,078 pages.

www.searchnz.co.nz: 500 pages.

www.seek.net.nz: 153 pages.