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Selected Search Tools for the WWW: A Guide

Alta Vista

Alta Vista has two styles of searching; users can submit what Alta Vista calls a Basic Search or an Advanced Search.

This format does not make use of Boolean operators.

Searches are case-sensitive when you use capital letters. If you use lowercase letters, Alta Vista will look for both capital and lowercase matches.

You can use the asterisk [*] as a wildcard.

Example:
quilt*

will retrieve entries with quilt, quilts, quilting, quilted, etc.

Indicate phrases by using quotation marks [" "] around the phrase.

Example:
"apple pie"

By using a plus sign [+] and the minus sign [-] you can require or exclude the terms you specify in a search.

Examples:
+Lawrence University
python -Monty

Perhaps the most useful feature of Alta Vista is the ability it gives you to constrain your search to parts of web pages. This can be very powerful. For example, searching title:"Des Moines" searches for the capitalized phrase Des Moines in the title of the web page. Searches may be constrained in a number of ways. The page on Searching Web Elements gives more details.

Alta Vista Advanced Search

Alta Vista Advanced Search allows you to use what they call a query builder or Boolean operators AND, OR, AND NOT, and NEAR to combine words and phrases; you must type operators in caps. You can also use parentheses for nesting terms. See the Advanced Search Cheat Sheet for more ideas. The Advanced Search Help provides further details.

In Advanced Search, you can also control the order in which the results are displayed. Documents containing the words you specify in the sorted by: box will be listed first. If left blank, the matching documents will not be sorted.

As in Basic Search, you can constrain your search to parts of web pages. See the help on Searching Web Elements for details.

Click here to search Alta Vista
Summary Chart
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Created: 9 February 2000
Updated: 9 August 2002

Gretchen Revie, Reference Librarian, Seeley G. Mudd Library
Lawrence University, PO Box 599, Appleton, WI 54912 (920) 832-7000