AltaVista this week said it plans to expand its European presence to include an additional 18 countries by the end of the year and hopes to be offering local content search sites to an estimated 136 million European Internet users by 2002.

Following the successful launch of www.altavista.de in April of last year in Germany, a full-fledged European division was established in October.

In the four months since, country search sites have been launched at an average rate of one a month -- www.altavista.se in October 1999, www.altavista.co.uk in December 1999, www.altavista.nl and www.altavista.fr in February 2000.

The original AltaVista site is already well known across Europe, with 15 million of its 54 million users a month coming from European countries. By launching local country sites with quality local content, AltaVista said it aims to offer the most personalized service on the Web to both English and non-English language speakers."

"The 90 percent of Europeans for whom English is not their first language can find today's Internet experience frustrating. With this move, AltaVista is making it fast and simple to find local-language search results wherever you live in Europe, and whatever your language," said Vesey Crichton, marketing and strategy director, AltaVista Europe.

AltaVista is a majority-owned operating company of CMGI Inc. (CMGI).