Which Search
Engine do I use?
Searching
for Information on the Web
|Yahoo
| Lycos | Open
Text | Excite | WebCrawler
| Magellan | InfoSeek
| Dejanews | WWWW
| Hotbot | AltaVista
|
You have probably
found that doing research on the Web or looking for a particular Web Site
can often be a time-consuming and frustrating experience. Sometimes
you get thousands of references returned to your search request, and at
other times, no matches at all.
This page has been provided to give you some background information about the various search engines available, and to help you in choosing and using them more efficiently.
It is important to note that the various search engines on the Web use different methods to find the information that they have placed in their indexes.
Also, the way in which you type a search query varies from one search engine to another. If you enter a query that contains two or more words, some search engines interpret this to mean that both words must be present in the references that are returned, while others will return matches on any one of the words.
On this Web Page
you will find explanations about how to enter your queries for the different
search engines, to help you get faster results.
URL Addresses
of some search engines: 
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.lycos.com
http://altavista.digital.com
http://www.excite.com
http://www.webcrawler.com
(Set up by Netscape)
Yahoo organizes sites by category,
and the search becomes more specific as further links are selected.
The sites have been prescreened. The catalog is well organized and
contains high-quality sites. You can also do a general search of
the whole index. Or you may be directed to go to the AltaVista search
engine for further searching.
Yahoo was the first Web search site to come on-line. It is one of the most commercially successful search sites. ($1 million in advertising revenue in l995)
It provides an extensive search which
returns a reasonable number of URLs.
It provides a simple set of search
options which allows for different kinds of searches.
Search Queries
using Yahoo!
When you enter multiple words, Yahoo!
returns only pages which containing all of the search words.
The search words may be found inside
other words, e.g. Albert may also find links
for Alberta.
More advanced queries will allow for
controlled searching, e.g. you can select such options as:
Lycos searches
both Web Page titles and Web Page contents for keywords.
It also catalogs
Web Pages, rather than entire sites. It provides an outline and abstract
for each page that matches the search criteria.
- Lycos claims to have indexed more
than 90% of the Web.
- Searches return hundreds of matches
- It also indexes Gopher, FTP and
HTTP files found elsewhere on the Internet
- It includes a directory of 40,000
most popular sites, and it reviews 7,000 of them.
- It is among the fastest and most
flexible search engines.
- Returned URLs are rated for relevance.
Documents with higher ratings appear first. You can adjust the search
to weed out documents with lower relevance ratings.
- It is the best site for speed and
thoroughness.
Search Queries
using Lycos:
Multiple word
searches return results containing any of the keywords. Keywords
embedded within other words are also returned.
To require all
the words to be matched you must choose an option "Match all words" or
use a customized search (AND).
A period after
a word will require exact matches on keywords, and a $ symbol means the
keyword followed by anything, e.g. basket$ returns basketful, basketball,
etc. A minus indicates exclusion, e.g. needles - knitting.
AltaVista catalogs individual Web
pages, rather than entire Web sites. It is one of the largest and fastest
search services available and also includes Usenet discussion groups.
It has the most comprehensive index
of documents on the Web. Your search criteria must be very specific
to restrict the number of documents returned.
AltaVista is one of the most popular
sites on the Web.
It has indexed more than 11 billion
words on 22 million Web pages. It includes a full-text index of more
than 13,000 newsgroups.
It is fast - using an AlphaStation
computer with 210GB RAID hard disk and 6 GB of RAM.
The search spider that crawls the
web runs on a DEC 3000 with 30 GB hard disk and 1 GB memory
AltaVista is the fastest spider in
existence, and fetches pages at a rate of 2.5 million per day. Thus
the index database can be updated every few days - it gets new pages and
removes those that no longer exist.
Search Queries
using AltaVista:
If you do not
capitalize any letters in the search keywords, then either upper or lower
cases matches will be made, e.g. toronto
returns matches on Toronto and toronto
If you use any
capitals at all, then an exact match only will be made, e.g. toRonto
returns 0 matches.
Multiple word
searches will return a match on one or more of the words.
Exact word matches
are the default. If you want other matches use an asterisk, either
in the middle or the end of a word.
Phrases can
be searched by enclosing the words within quotes, or by joining the words
with a semicolon, e.g. "boston university"
or boston;university.
A + sign in
front means this word is required, a - sign means a word should be excluded.
An advanced
search criteria is available and can control the search extremely well,
e.g. you can require that two words must appear within 10 words
of each other in a document - e.g. a search for Edward
Murrow will find Edward R. Murrow using the NEAR search criteria.
The search can be restricted to parts
of document, e.g. document titles, or embedded links to other Web sites.
Excite provides reviews of Web sites,
and Usenet discussion groups. Excite looks at the content of both
Web pages and Usenet newsgroups for keyword matches.
Excite is not as comprehensive as
Lycos or AltaVista.
It has indexed 1.5 million web pages
and returns a limited number of matches on searches.
But it can search by content - using
similar meanings of words.
Excite includes searchable reviews
of 50,000 Web sites, indexes for 1 million articles from 10,000 newsgroups,
and a fully searchable copy of the last two weeks' worth of classified
advertisement from Usenet. Searches tend to be slower than other search
sites.
Search Queries
using Excite:
Enter AND, OR
and AND NOT within the search words to control the search manually.
WebCrawler is managed by America Online.
The cartoon surfing spider logo has
a cute appearance which makes it attractive to children.
The interface to the search engine
is simple to use, but the search can be customized for more control.
The search database is less extensive,
but includes site reviews.
WebCrawler uses an automated program
that travels the Web looking for new entries to add to its search index.
Search Queries
using WebCrawler:
Multiple-word queries return a match
on any of the keywords.
To require all words to be matched
use AND, e.g. gardening AND vegetables
Put quotes around phrases that you
want to search for.
InfoSeek searches
on Web Page content. You can also seek using the search categories
which are provided.
InfoSeek provides
a directory of Internet resources on both Web sites and Usenet newsgroups.
InfoSeek searches
a database of periodicals and more than 1 million Web Pages.
Search Queries
using Infoseek:
Multiple-word
queries will return only pages that contain all the search words.
Proper names
must be capitalized exactly to return a match.
Use quotation
marks around words that must appear together, e.g. "jumping
beans"
Two adjacent
capitalized words are treated as a single unit. When searching for
several proper names separate them with commas, e.g. John
Kennedy, California
Use HotBot to
search for Web Page content.
The search options
provided are extremely powerful, and are very useful for advanced searching.
Search Queries
using HotBot:
Choose from
the drop-down boxes the kind of search to use.
WORLD WIDE
WEB WORM
World Wide Worm
searches on Web Page and Usenet content.
You can also
choose to search only in URLs or page titles or addresses.
Occasionally,
you may find something not available elsewhere.
Search Queries
using WWWW:
You can control
the search easily by clicking on the choices offered, e.g. AND versus OR
searching.
Magellan reviews
and rates sites.
You'll see a
short summary and a link to the full review for each site found.
Search categories
are available.
Search Queries
using Magellan:
You can type
AND and OR within the search words to control the search.
Global Search choices