But unlike Yahoo, Looksmart will list your site in all relevant categories instead of just 1 or 2. The discussion boards are roaring with questions and concerns about the ever-changing algorithms of AltaVista. I don't believe that anyone knows for sure exactly how they index their sites, because it changes like night and day. I don't believe there is a way to know exactly how they index their sites because they keep that information confidential. All we can do is study and guess.
Many people think that they now use link popularity in their results.
Now that AltaVista is partnered with Looksmart, they are also using some of Looksmart's results. Right now we are in the middle of a constantly changing industry. I predict that in the future, the search engine craziness will have calmed down and that there will only be a handful of major search engines left after many mergers and bankruptcies. By then, maybe we will also have that algorithm figured out. Then again maybe we won't.