(These rules work for Altavista, Deja News, Excite, Lycos and Metacrawler search engines. In order to know more, you can visit their sites. However, these general rules are often helpful on most of search engines...)
Simple Queries.
Quotes (Example: "Red cars") Finds documents containing exactly these words in this order. Plus and Minus sign (Example: +Red -"fast cars" ) + means a required word (or phrase). - means that you want to exclude that word. So this query finds documents containing Red, but not containing fast cars. Capitalization Lower-case letters indicate a case-insensitive match. If you type any capital letters, you force an exact case match on the entire word. '*' To search for occurrences of any of a group of words with a similar pattern. You have to use the '*' only after at least three letters. The '*' notation will match from zero up to five additional letters in lower-case only. Capital letters and digits will not therefore be matched. ***
Ranking Simple Queries
To rank the results, Altavista uses a scoring algorithm; documents with a higher score appear on the top of list. Here rules used by Altavista:
- the query words or phrases are found in the first few words of the document (for example, in the title of a Web page or in the headers of Usenet news articles).
- the query words or phrases are found close to one another in the document.
- the document contains more than one instance of the query word or phrase.
- Rules used by Altavista may not match with all things you are searching for!
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Restricting searches
title:"Fast cars"(Altavista searches for pages with the phrase Fast cars in the title). anchor:click-here (Altavista searches for pages with the phrase click here in the text of a hyperlink). text:cameras (Altavista searches for pages that contain the word cameras in any part of the visible text, not in a link or an image, for example.) applet:Java (Altavista searches for pages containing the name of the Java applet class in an applet tag; in this case, Java). object:ActiveX (Altavista searches for pages containing the name of the ActiveX object in an object tag; in this case, ActiveX). link:mit.edu (Altavista searches for pages that contain at least one link to a page with mit.edu in its URL). image:star.jpg (Altavista searches for pages with 'star.jpg' in an image tag). url:home.html (Altavista searches for pages with the words home and html together in the page's URL. Equivalent to url:"home html"). host:digital.com (Altavista searches for pages with the phrase digital.com in the host name portion of the URL). domain:it (Altavista searches for pages whitin the domain it ('it' is for Italy). So you can restrict search within damains like: .com, .edu, .net, country codes , and so on). from:username@domain.com (Altavista searches for news articles with the words username@domain.com in the From: field). subject:"computer virus" (Altavista searches for news articles with the phrase computer virus in the Subject: field). newsgroups:comp.virus (Altavista searches for news articles posted (or crossposted) in news groups with comp.virus in the name). summary:invest* (Altavista searches for news articles with the word invest, investment, investiture, etc., in the summary). keywords:USA (Altavista searches for news articles with the word USA in all caps in the keyword list). ***
Look how your Web page is indexed by AltaVista:
Metatag
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Advanced Queries.
You can use operators and expression syntax to construct queries:
- AND requires that both words are shown in the resulting documents. Example: Red AND cars
- OR requires that at least one is shown in the resulting documents. Example: White OR Black
- NEAR ensures that both are within ten words of each other in the resulting documents. Example: Ferrari NEAR Lamborghini
- NOT is used to exclude words or phrases. Example: Ferrari AND NOT (Isabella or Enzo)
- Alternatively, you can use the symbols & for AND, | for OR, ! for NOT, and ~ for NEAR.
- If you need to use any of these words as search words in a query, you must place them in quotes.
- You can use parentheses to group search expressions.
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(In order to know more about how Altavista works, you can visit Altavista's home page and then click on 'help' icon for simple help or click on 'advanced' and then on 'help' for advanced help).
& (AND) (This is the default). Example: dog & cat. To search both "dog" and "cat".
| (OR)Example: dog | cat. To search for all news articles with "dog" or "cat" somewhere in the posting. However Deja News will rank higher those articles that contain both words.
&! (AND NOT) Example: dog &! cat. To search for "dog" and withou "cat".
* Example: inter* matches internet, international, etc. All records which contain any of the matched words will be included in your search results.
? Example: dis? which matches disk, dish, etc.
( ) Example: dog & (cat | mouse). In this example Deja News first search for what is inside the parentheses, "cat or mouse", and then look for news articles which also contain "dog"
{...} (braces) Braces allow searches on ranges of words (the range is interpreted alphabetically). For example, the query {monkey monkeying} locate articles containing the words "monkey", "monkey's", "monkey73", "monkeying", etc.
Quotes You can put words within quotes in order to build phrases. Example: "help desk".
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Near searching
- Near searching is useful when you want find words within a specified distance of each other.
- Syntax: <keyword1> ^<distance> <keyword2>
- The <distance> value specifies how many characters there are from the first word to the second word. If <distance> is unspecified, as in <keyword1> ^ <keyword2>, a default distance of 5 characters is assumed. Examples:
dog ^50 animals dog ^ cat zig ^1 zag ***
Author Searching (~a)
~a is used to search for words within the author context of a posting.
Syntax: ~a <email_address_element>
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Subject Searching (~s)
~s is used to search for words within the subject context of a posting.
Syntax: ~s <subject>
Example: ~s (help & guides)
This search finds all articles with both "help" and "guides" as part of their subject.
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Newsgroup Searching (~g)
~g is used to limit the search within articles posted to newsgroups with names containing the specified word(s).
Syntax: ~g <newsgroup>
Example: ~g rec.*startrek*
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Creation Date Searching (~dc)
~dc is used to search for articles posted on the specified date (or, if a range of dates is specified, within the specified range). The date format used with ~dc is of the form yyyy/mm/dd.
Syntax: ~dc <date_or_date_range>
Example: ~dc 1996/04/01
This search finds all articles posted on April 1, 1996.
(You can know more about Deja News visiting its site!)
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Plus sign (+) If you put a plus sign before a word, Excite will retrieve all documents containing that word. Minus sign (-) If you put a minus sign before a word, Excite will NOT retrieve documents containing that word. These operators must appear in ALL CAPS and with a space on each side in order to work.
AND requires that both words are shown in the resulting documents. Example: Red AND cars OR requires that at least one is shown in the resulting documents. Example: "Red cars" OR Ferrari AND NOT is used to exclude words or phrases from a query. Example: Ferrari AND NOT Isabella or Enzo) ( ) Parentheses are used to group expressions together for more complicated queries. Excite lists 10 search results at a time in decreasing order of relevance. The percentage sign to the left of each result is the relevance rating. Click on the link More Like This, next to the title. Excite will immediately use that document as an example in a new search, one that will find more sites similar to the one you liked. (You can know more about Excite, visiting its site!)***
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Use the minus (-) symbol to exclude a word or phrase. Use a period (.) after a keyword to have an exact match. (Enter "bank." to find bank, but not bankers, banking, etc.) Use a dollar sign ($) to match partial string. (Enter "gard$" and get garden, gardenias, etc.). (You can lnow more about Lycos visiting its site!)***
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MetaCrawler sends your queries to several web search engines, including Lycos, WebCrawler, Excite, Alta Vista, Yahoo, HotBot, and Galaxy.
Go to the configuration page and turn on Extra Functionality. This will give you several options not available by default.
When you create a search, specify groups of words by surrounding them in quotes. Also, specify words or phrases that must appear in documents by prefixing them with a plus sign, and prefix words or phrases that must not appear by prefixing them with a minus sign.
Warning: not all engines queried support these features. They are, therefore, only suggestions that MetaCrawler will use when tailoring each source's query.
(In order to know more about Metacrawler, visit its site!)
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