To help you find what you're looking for as quickly as possible, AltaVista provides the following categories of content for Web searches:

AltaVista Results
Web Results are the most relevant web pages found by Yahoo! Search Technology in response to your search terms. Web Results are generated from the billions of web pages crawled and indexed by Yahoo! Search. The Yahoo! Search index is more than 99% populated through the free web crawl process. Results may also include links to sites that participate in the Content Acquisition Program (CAP). CAP enables content providers to submit web pages and content directly to Yahoo! for review and inclusion within the Yahoo! Search index through the Site MatchTM or Inktomi Search SubmitTM programs. Sites from both of these programs pay to be included in the search engine index, and those participating in Site Match also pay to be reviewed for relevance. Results may also include links to sites that participate in the AltaVista Express Inclusion Program. Sites from this program also pay to be included in the search engine index and reviewed for relevance. Participation in CAP or Express Inclusion has no bearing on placement or ranking in search results.

Note: Inktomi Search SubmitTM is being discontinued in conjunction with the launch of Site MatchTM. The AltaVista Express Inclusion program has also been discontinued. Legacy Express Inclusion customers will continue to receive distribution on the historical AltaVista network until their subscriptions expire. Search results will include links from the Search Submit program only through April 15, 2004.

Shortcuts. For popular searches, AltaVista provides relevant, high-quality results, called Shortcuts, from the invisible Web - sources that are not normally available to search engines. All shortcuts have an icon and gray labels naming their sources. Some Shortcuts are paid for by advertisers, while others may be paid for by AltaVista, which may pay partners for use of their content in Shortcuts. To see whether a shortcut is paid for by an advertiser, click the icon.

Extend Your Search
Extend Your Search links are provided by Yahoo!. These links pass your search query directly to useful content for a wide variety of searches.

Sponsored Matches
Sponsor Results are sites that pay for placement in search results on terms that are relevant to their business. These listings are provided by Overture Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo!, and appear on AltaVista Search results pages.

You'll see Sponsor Results when they're relevant to the specific search terms you used. For example, if you search for "digital cameras," you'll see Sponsor Results for web sites that provide information about or sell digital cameras. The AltaVista Search results pages separate Sponsor Results from other results so you can tell them apart. For more information please see Sponsor Results or, if you are interested in participating in this program, please see Overture Advertising. Sponsored Matches are search results provided by paying advertisers. Sponsored Matches are provided by Overture, Inc., which generates highly relevant search results by allowing advertisers to bid for placement order based on specific search keywords. Overture is a leading provider of pay-for-performance search. For additional information on listing with Overture for distribution on AltaVista and other top search sites, please click here.