Simple Search Syntax at AltaVista
(+, -, quotation marks)
| When you enter a series of words, with no punctuation,
AltaVista matches all pages on which any of those words appear. But the pages that include
all the terms you have entered appear near the top of the list, and those with fewer
appear lower, and those with only one go to the very bottom. In Boolean terms, it
interprets your query as if the terms were separated by OR. It's a good strategy to enter many words related to what you want -- even a dozen of more. Don't worry that the more words you enter, the more matches AltaVista finds. It makes no difference whether there are 100,000 matches or a million. What matters is that the most useful matches appear near the top of the list.
harry potter quidditch With no punctuation in the query, the software interprets harry potter as a phrase and quidditch as a separate word. Pages with the phrase harry potter (those words together in that order) and quidditch will appear at the top of the match list. Then will appear pages with all three of these words in any order. "harry potter" +quidditch The plus (+) sign means only include pages that contain the word quidditch. Quotation marks delineate a phrase. Pages with both quidditch and the phrase "harry potter" would appear at the top of the list; then would come pages with quidditch but not "harry potter." Pages with "harry potter" but not quidditch would not appear. "harry potter" quidditch This query matches all pages that have either the phrase harry potter or the word quidditch. Pages with both go to the top of the list, so in most cases the top 200 results (which is what you see) will not differ from the above examples. But, technically speaking, a page with just the phrase harry potter or just the word quidditch would be a match. harry potter -quidditch Both these queries yield pages on which the phrase harry potter
appears and that do not contain the word quidditch. Tips for Improving Your Search Results "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" If you are looking for a quotation, enter the entire quotation surrounded by quotation marks. That will give you the most precise results. If you just type the words without the punctuation, the query will still be treated as a phrase, but ignoring the "noise words" like "the" and "of". AltaVista stores the entire text of Web pages and can find an exact match even for a phrase that consists entirely of very common words, like "to be or not to be". +"George Washington" colonel Allegheny Fort Pitt When you enter many words (5 or more words or phrases), the pages that include all the terms you have entered appear near the top of the list, and those with fewer appear lower. To refine your search, enter more words related to what you are looking for. You will get more matches (perhaps millions more), but the ones you want will be more likely to appear at the top of the list. In this case, because of the length of the query, the automatic phrase making does not apply. So you'll want to put quotation marks around George Washington and put plus signs in front of the most important terms. On the results page, edit your query and check the box next to "Search These Results" to launch a new search limited just to the pages you found with the first search. Be as specific as you can, e.g., cancer is more specific than disease; "lung cancer" than cancer; and mesothelioma than "lung cancer". colo*r Use an asterix (*) to indicate missing letters if you are uncertain of spelling or if you want to cover both the British and American spellings of the same word, e.g., color and colour, theater and theatre. You cannot enter an asterix at the beginning of a word in your query. But you can enter it after three characters and have it stand for up to 5 characters. "George Washington" Use uppercase or lowercase text for your search words. Uppercase and lowercase text in your query are treated the same way. When you want to find only exact matches with the capitalization as you entered it you should surround the query with quotation marks. The query California finds california, California, and CALIFORNIA. But the query "California" finds only California. NB -- this is very helpful when searching for trade names, which often have unique capitalization, with capitals appearing in the middle of the word, like eXcursion. PDP-11/70 Alta Vista treats all punctuation equally. It doesn't matter whether you type a period, a comma, a semi-colon or what. All queries that are the same other than the punctuation will yield the same results. This is very helpful if you are looking for a product name (the most common instance of punctuation in the middle of words). You do not need to remember the exact name (probably only the marketer who dreamed it up would) -- VAX/11-780, VAX-11/780, VAX:11,780 would all give the same results. You can also use punctuation (any punctuation), without any spaces as a way to construct a phrase. "Jean Luc Picard" Jean_Luc_Picard and Jean-Luc-Picard
are all identical. A word with a hyphen is treated as if it were two words joined in a phrase, so e-mail is not identical to email. If you want to look for both possibilities, you need to enter both, separated by OR (in upper case to indicate that that term is being used as a command, rather than a term that you are searching for). elephant If you are interested in only pages in a language other than English, specify the language. If your keyboard is set up to allow you to enter foreign characters, do so. AltaVista will recognize them. If you cannot type in the target language -- for instance you want the French word elephant with accent marks over the two e's -- be sure to enter your query in lower case. Then AltaVista will look for those letters both uppercase and lowercase and both with and without accent marks. |
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