AltaVista aims to lure eyes from Google

AltaVista today unveiled Raging Search, a new search engine through which the portal will attempt to lure "high-end" Net veterans to its service.

As first reported by CNET News.com, Raging Search is AltaVista's attempt to challenge the increasingly popular Google search engine. Google's demographics are composed of more sophisticated Web users.

Search results on Raging Search are presented faster and with more relevance than those on its primary engine, the company says on its Web site. In addition, the pages that display the search results are free of banner advertising. Instead, the site will generate revenues through links on the bottom of each page that AltaVista will sell to online merchants.

The launch of Raging Search comes as AltaVista plans a second attempt at taking its company public. It postponed its initial public offering last month because of poor market conditions for Internet stocks.

"We're confident we'll be a successful public company some day," AltaVista chief executive Rod Schrock told Bloomberg News. "We're waiting for stability (in the) Internet space. That's the only condition to going public."

Google is a start-up search engine backed by some of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capitalists, including Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Its technology ranks results based on the popularity of the site. A site's popularity is measured by how many other sites link to it.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.