Not sure if this has been discussed before, but I've seen this page in my referrer logs several times before (also not always safe for work):

http://www.altavista.com/image/randomlink

It does exactly the same thing without the need for the API – i.e. loads a random site.

I've seen people suggesting that AltaVista have been hacked or hijacked by adult sites – but I think that's just an assumption based upon which page was returned to the visitor.

Does anyone know whether there's a reason for this page being available on AltaVista's site?

Well the great thing about Randtastic is that the page loads in a frame, so that as long as the page doesn't bust out of the frames (some do) you can easily get another random page.

Also, the page doesn't yet use the API (as I have explained in a post at http://shiwej.com), but it will use the API in order to filter out adult content should people choose to want it filtered. I've been using the site for the past two days (since I made it) and have only seen about 5 or 6 adult pages out of a ton, and most of the pages give you a warning about their content.

The very first one i got was extremely adult with absolutely zero warning heh heh. hasnt happened since though.

I added filtering by default, and you can opt-out at http://shiwej.com/randtastic

Too bad Yahoo limits to 5000 hits per day, so I'm going to have to add a note when the limit is reached that people can either come back the next day or disable filtering.