Date:         Wed, 26 Jan 2000 01:46:42 -0500
Reply-To:     TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Sender:       The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace
              
From:         Bob Rankin 
Subject:      TOURBUS - 25 Jan 2000 - Advanced Searching
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      TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: Advanced Search Techniques
      TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP:  http://www.altavista.com
 
Alta Vista has for a long time been my favorite search engine.
That's because it has some nifty features to perform a variety of
specialized searches. In today's issue, you'll learn some advanced
search techniques that'll help you find what you seek.
 
TOURBUS is made possible by the kind support of our sponsors. I thank
the folks at Affordable Computer Supply Marketplace, TargetBarter,
and "The Big Eye" for making today's post possible.  As always,
please visit our wonderful sponsors and thank them for keeping the bus
rolling!
 
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Alta Vista boasts a huge web database, with over 250 million pages,
and since they index millions of pages per day, it's likely the
freshest as well.  But because they catalog every word on every web
page, the dreaded "25,679 documents match your query" problem is
likely to pop up if you don't specify your search carefully.
 
True enough, it can be a brute force tool - but if you know how to
tame it using the advanced features, you can avoid the "drink from
a firehose" syndrome that often results from a search engine query.
 
 
ADVANCED SEARCHING WITH ALTA VISTA
----------------------------------
 
Here's a little tip for you:  Don't bother clicking the "Advanced
Search" button at AltaVista.  You can do some really amazing things
without leaving the AV home page.  In fact, even the people who
develop AV use "simple search" almost exclusively!  Here are some
tips for fine tuning your AV searches:
 
1) Use the "+" and "-" operators
 
   Prefix your search words with "+" to indicate that they MUST
   occur in a page to be considered a hit, and use "-" to exclude
   pages. For example:
 
        +chocolate +turtle
 
   will find only pages that contain BOTH words, capitalized or not.
   If you omit the "+" AV will return some pages about chocolate, some
   about turtle, in addition to pages containing both words.  In this
   example, the difference is 896,060 vs. 10,211 matches.  By adding
   an exclusion term as shown below, the number of hits drops to 1869.
 
   By adding an exclusion term as shown below, the search results can
   be tuned more finely.
 
        +chocolate +turtle -peanut
 
2) Use quotes for phrases
 
   Well, 7329 matches is still a bit much to digest, so let's turn up
   the heat at AV.  If you really want to find Chocolate Turtles (and
   not just pages with those two words) put it in quotes.  The search
 
        +"chocolate turtle" -peanut
 
   yields only 336 hits!  Now we're down to the level where you could
   check out each matching document without spending hours.
 
3) Use capital letters when appropriate
 
   If you're looking for a proper name, use capital letters and AV
   will do an EXACT match.  These two searches will return very
   different results:
 
       george washington
       George Washington
 
4) Use the "host" and "domain" keywords
 
   Have you ever wanted to look for a specific word at just one
   website?  Try a search like this:
 
        +chocolate +host:ama-assn.org
 
   This tells AV to find articles about chocolate published only by
   the American Medical Association, and it yields just 29 hits.
   You can also exclude a website or an entire domain from a search:
 
        +"tax reform" -host:whitehouse.gov
        +"human rights" -domain:cn
 
   The first example excludes documents published by one website, (the
   US Whitehouse) and the second eliminates all documents from an
   entire domain (the country of China).
 
5) Use the "title" keyword
 
   If you're looking for pages on a specific topic, instead of pages
   that just contain certain words, try limiting your search like so:
 
        title:"chocolate addiction"
 
   This often helps to weed out unwanted hits. The fact that someone
   bothered to categorize their page with a