This page is intended to promote more efficient web searching by providing a brief overview of features available on several of the more commonly used search engines and Metasearch Engines. For more complete information, check the "help" pages provided by the specific search engines.
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Hotbot uses a fill-in-the-blank style form for both simple and advanced searching. Sequencing is permitted using parentheses (). Hotbot is sensitive to interesting case, and phrase searching may be performed using quotation marks "…".
and = &, +
or = |
not = -
adjacent = ;, !
* More information on specific limiting.(external
link)
| search Hotbot |
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If no other specification is made, AltaVista
automatically performs a search for two terms as an OR. It is case
sensitive and sensitive to interesting case, and phrase searching
using quotation marks is allowed. Sequencing using parentheses is also permitted.
Both internal and concluding truncation are permitted. The * is used, and takes the place of up to five characters within or at the end of a word.
| search AltaVista |
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If no other specification is made when two
or more terms are entered they will be searched using OR. Phrase
searching should be performed
using quotation marks. WebCrawler has no advanced search option.
| search WebCrawler |
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Truncation using * is permitted. The default simple search is OR. Phrase searching and sequencing are also allowed.
Symbols recognized
and = +
not =
Start with the categories Yahoo provides. Search any term followed by indices and Yahoo! Will bring up a list culled from its subject categories, indexed page titles, and document descriptions.
More features may be selected from the Search Options page in Yahoo! (external link)
| search Yahoo! |
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Sequencing is permitted using parentheses, and phrase searching using quotation marks is allowed.
and = AND, +
not = AND NOT, -
or = OR
Default search. Results are ranked with the documents containing both terms at the top, followed by those containing fewer terms, and finally by those containing only one term.
| search Excite |
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Infoseek allows truncation using * and phrase searching using quotation marks. The engine is selectively case sensitive (see below). Advanced searching in Infoseek is performed using a fill-in-the-blank style form.
Will search for proper names if the initial letters are capitalized. The terms will be searched as a phrase unless a comma separates them.
Dorothy Hamill will find Dorothy Hamill
Dorothy, Toto finds Dorothy AND Toto, but necessarily
next to each other
Surrounding two or more words with brackets […] requires them to appear within 100 words of each other in the documents retrieved.
To find a page with two or more phrases, enclose each phrase in quotes and separate them by a comma(s) with no space between.
e.g.: "Parish nursing","chronic care"
To narrow within a topic in one step use |
natural disaster | hurricane | Florida
Numerical score based on frequency and comparison to words in their database.
site:[domainname]
retrieves pages within a specific domain
link:[www.pagename.com]
retrieves a list of pages linked to a specific site
title:[word]
will retrieve pages with that word in the title
url:[word]
will retrieve sites with that term in the url
| search Infoseek |
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Truncation is not permitted. Terms are searched exactly as they are typed, and when two or more terms are entered pages where the terms appear in close proximity are given precedence .
Phrase searching using quotation marks is recognized.
not = -
OR is not recognized.
Results are ranked, and appear in order according to the number of highly rated pages which have linked to the page in question, and which best match the terms searched. The pages judged to be the "best" according to these criteria are returned at the top of the list.
Click on the bar graph to the left of any individual result to see what pages have linked to the result.
The "I feel lucky" button automatically takes you to the first web page returned for your query.
| search Google |
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Metasearch engines act as interfaces, allowing your search terms to be processed simultaneously by several search engines. Depending upon which search engines are contacted, symbols, parentheses, quotation marks and other limiting symbols may be used. The symbols are automatically removed when the individual search engine does not permit them or recognize their use, and the results from these search engines may be skewed accordingly. Most metasearch engines have both time constraints and restrictions on the number of results returned by each individual engine.
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Created by J. Barker
Last updated 9/7/99
Corrections or comments
please contact: jobarker@dwu.edu