Case sensitivity

    and the effects it has on your search results

    In the table below, compare the figures in column 4 to see how Boolean operators and upper/lower case can affect your search results in Altavista's Advanced search. Column 1 informs you of the equivalent search criteria in Altavista's Basic Search (the results should be roughly the same, although they do change over time).
      1 2 3 4
      Equivalent search criteria in Basic Search Search criteria in Altavista's Advanced Search Number of pages found? Example of results
    1 thomas thomas 8,058,336 Thomas, ThoMaS, THOMAS, thomas etc.
    2 cook cook 2,592,096 cook, COOk, cooK etc.
    3 thomas cook thomas OR cook 8,096,953 thomas (etc.) / cook (etc.) / both
    4 +thomas +cook
    (NOTE: No space after "+" or "-")    		 thomas AND cook 328,906 cook (etc.) …… thomas (etc.)
    5 +thomas -cook thomas AND NOT cook 7,733,389 thomas (etc.) …… cook (etc.)
    6 "thomas cook"

    (Quotation marks looks for the exact phrase; the use of lower-case means that all combinations of upper-case and lower-case will be found)    		 thomas cook

    (The use of lower-case means that all combinations of upper-case and lower-case will be found)    		 24,365 thomas cook, Thomas Cook, Thomas cook, THOMAS COOK, ThOmaS COok etc.
    7 Thomas Cook

    (The use of upper-case means that only that particular combination of upper-case and lower-case will be found)    		 Thomas OR Cook 7,604,280 Thomas / Cook / both

    (no other variants, e.g. THOmas!)
    8 "Thomas Cook"
    		 Thomas Cook 22,621 Thomas Cook
    9 "THOMAS COOK" THOMAS COOK 1,083 THOMAS COOK
    10 "ThOmAs CoOk" ThOmAs CoOk 0 ThOmAs CoOk
    11 THOmas

    (compare with results of "thomas" above! (1))    		 THOmas 3 THOmas
    12 +"Thomas Cook" +agency Thomas Cook AND agency 2591 Thomas Cook (no other variants!) …… agency (etc.)
    13 +"Thomas Cook" -agency

    (Quotation marks looks for the exact phrase; "+" requires the phrase; "-" excludes the word)    		 Thomas Cook AND NOT agency 20,030 Thomas Cook (no other variants!)……agency

    (e.g. searching for a person called Thomas Cook!)
    14 cook*

    (compare with results of cook above! (2))

    REMEMBER (in Altavista):

    1) * can only appear after a minimum of 3 characters

    2) * can stand for 0-... characters

    		 cook* 9,092,814 cook, cooks, cooking, cookery, Cookeville, cookiecutter etc.
    15 +"Thomas Cook" +agenc*

    (compare with results of +"Thomas Cook" +agency above! (12))    		 Thomas Cook AND agenc* 3773 Thomas Cook (no other variants!) …… agency/agencies (etc.)