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 Searching the Internet Part I
Some Basic Considerations and Automated Search Indexes
Table 1
Jack Solock, Special Librarian
September 1996
Table 1. A Summary of basic search features of eight major automated Internet search indexes. (Note that exact syntax of your query using these operators is given. For more information on operator usage, along with examples, see the search index help pages.) Always replace "term" or "terms" with your query terms. For the purposes of this column, "must" is treated as "AND." "Must not" is treated as "NOT."
Key
Form Based
- The feature is present but only through menu picks on a form-based interface. For field searches that are form based, the searchable fields are listed below the words "Form Based."
"..."
- Type terms between double quotation marks.
NEAR/N
- This is a proximity operator where the user specifies the range of the number of words one word should be from another. NEAR/10 would mean within 10 words.
NA
- Not available at this time.
| Operation |
The Best |
The Rest |
And a new one that shows promise |
| Alta Vista |
Open Text |
WebCrawler |
InfoSeek |
excite |
Lycos |
HotBot |
InfoSeek Ultra |
| Boolean AND |
AND or & |
Form Based |
AND |
+ |
AND |
Form Based |
Form Based |
+ |
| OR |
OR or | |
Form Based |
OR |
Type terms |
OR |
Form Based |
Form Based |
Type terms |
| NOT |
AND NOT or ! |
Form Based |
NOT |
- |
AND NOT |
Form Based |
Form Based |
- |
| Phrase |
"..." |
Form Based |
"..." |
"..." |
NA |
NA |
Form Based |
"..." |
| Proximity |
NEAR (10 words) |
Form Based |
ADJ (adjacent) Near/N (user specifies N) |
term-term (adjacent) [term term] (100 words) |
NA |
NA |
NA |
NA |
| Truncation |
* |
* |
NA |
NA |
NA |
NA |
NA |
NA |
| Field Search |
anchor:terms
applet:terms
host:terms
image:terms
link:terms
text:terms
title:terms
url:terms |
Form Based
Summary
Title
1st Heading
URL |
NA |
NA |
NA |
NA |
Form Based
Media Type
Location
URL |
link:terms
site:terms
url:terms
title:terms |
This article originally appeared as part of the End User's Corner, a featured column of InterNIC News, which was published monthly by Network Solutions, Inc. and InterNIC from May 1996 through March 1998. As of April 1998, End User's Corner will be published by the Internet Scout Project.
Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-1998. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the End User's Corner provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The Internet Scout Project provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712140. The Government has certain rights in this material.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin - Madison or the National Science Foundation.
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