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The truncation feature is a sad loss and there is no real subsitute other than explicitly searching on all of the variations ( colonial OR colonize OR colonise OR colonized OR colonised OR colonization OR colonisation) The other alternative is to rely on automatic stemming such as done by Google, but the results there are irregular and you cannot always count on it finding all of the endings.If you have a search that really needs the NEAR function, there is a Google "hack" you can go, Google API Proximity Search (GAPS) , to that allows a distance of 1, 2 or 3 words apart. You can also take advantage of the clunkier "wildcard" option Google provides which is discussed below in the Google section of this page.
With the removal of these features and the lack of a unique database of its own (see below), this may be the death knell of AltaVista as a required tool for the serious searcher.
Since AltaVista and AllTheWeb are now owned by Yahoo, it does make sense for Yahoo to phase out the two, now "minor", properties. It remains to be seen whether the serious searcher wins or loses in the end. We may be moving into a battle of two giants and Yahoo has a lot to offer that Google at present does not, such as its outstanding personal portal, "My.Yahoo!", and its very powerful Groups offerings. The "may" in the previous sentence is because it may be three instead of two. Bill Gates is not satisfied with anyone but himself controlling what appears on your screen, so look forward to hearing a lot more about MSN Search, as well.
(April 2004)
On the new home page, you will find a link to AltaVista's new toolbar option (becoming de rigueur these days for search engines). You can add it to your browser toolbars in the same way you can add a Google toolbar, a Teoma toolbar, a HotBot toolbar, etc.
AltaVista's conversion calculator is virtually identical to the one provided by AllTheWeb, except that you do not have to use the colon after the word "convert" and you can also use the word "conversion". As with AllTheWeb, you can do conversions for length, time, speed, temperature, weight, area, and cooking/volume. For example:convert 3 mi
convert 3 miles
conversion 15 hrs
conversion 15 hours
AltaVista in not advertising it yet, but you can also do math calculations , similar to Google and AllTheWeb. For example:((5+3)*4^2)/2If you haven't taken a look recently at the various "Shortcuts" provided by AltaVista, do so at
Home› AltaVista Help > Search > Shortcuts You are more likely to have noticed these popping up when you do certain kinds of searches (which is what AltaVista intended.) These include area codes, directions, downloads, exchange rates, recipes, etc.AltaVista's Local Sponsored Listings -There is a lot of talk about "localized" searches these days, since Google's announcement of its Beta "Search by Location ". With AltaVista, you now have a local search, fully there (not just Beta), but just being applied to "sponsored listings." (from Overture). Do a search on some product and you will see local (to your ZIP code) merchants:
AltaVista has probably been able to figure out your ZIP code, which you will see in the box, and you will find listings for local merchants who provide that product, the distance from your ZIP code to them, and a link to get a map. You will also see a link to more local listings and you can change the ZIP code, or use an area code.(October 2003)
For example: title:putin AND (born OR birth*)(July 2003)
The Advanced search page is almost the same, except for the same decrease in language options as on the home page and an addition of a "File type" search that allows "All file types" (the default), or HTML pages only or PDF files only.
AltaVista is refreshing its pages much more frequently ("50% of displayed results daily") and results now include PDF files (joining the ranks of Google and AllTheWeb in covering that formerly "invisible web" realm). The size of the database is now up to 1.3 billion.
The usual "third interface" page that AltaVista is inevitably drawn to, or renames, or withdraws, or introduces, etc. (Remember Live Topics, Refine, Power Search, Raging Search, Search Assistant?) is once more present in a modest form, now called "More Precision", which just provides boxes for simplified Boolean: "All these words," "any of these words," "none of these words," and "this exact phrase." This page is gotten to by the "More Precision" "query builder" link to the right of the search box on the main page.
AltaVista is now back in the search engine news wars, introducing AltaVista
News 2.0. The News search page contains headlines for several categories
and links to headlines in 10 categories: Top Stories, Business Entertainment/Culture,
Finance, International, Lifestyle/Travel, Science/Health, Sports, Technology,
and United States. AltaVista claims the " largest free, full-text
news source," with continuous updates and an archive of up to 30 days containing
some very major news sources. In spite of the size claim, AltaVista
is providing considerably fewer articles retrieved than either Google or
AllTheWeb. For example, in a news search on "Baku," AltaVista retrieved
20 articles, while AllTheWeb retrieved 85 (covering just about one week),
and Google retrieved 270.
The news search page provides searching by news category, by region
and country, by either "all sources" or by any one of 14 of the majors
publications and newswires covered, and by timeframe (today/yesterday,
last 7 days, last 2 weeks, last 30 days, anytime). You can also sort by
relevance (the default) or by date. The News page is also available in
German (Choose the German AltaVista site to use this)
For some searches, on results pages you will see AltaVista "Shortcuts." These may appear when you search for certain categories of information: Auto, Celebrity Images, Directions, Downloads, Finance, Greeting Cards, Local Information, Maps, Movies, News, Recipes, Shopping, Weather, White Pages, Yellow Pages. If, for example, you search for the name of a city and also for certain words such as "directions," a shortcut will appear among your results that will lead to a MapQuest page. Look for these indicated by a little box with an arrow in it, just above the Web results.
In spite of the more trivial ("marketing whiz" generated) changes such
as colors and logo, some of the above changes may be quite significant
for the serious searcher. Fortunately, in addition to its marketing
people, AltaVista also has some top notch technical people who are hard
at work improving actual results.
(November 2002)
(If it had truly just been ANDing results, the first answer should have
been the same as the third. Overall, the automatic phrase identification
should improve relevancy most of the time.)
(July 2002)
3. - Raging Search is no longer available .
(June, 2001, modified July 2002)
Excite is dropping most of its European portals.
Excite has announced that, in July (2001), it will close down all of its European portal operations except Excite Italia and Excite UK. Excite itself (the main version) will of course continue to be available. [Editor's note: This is indicative of my suspicion that many of the country-specific sites provided by search engines such as Excite, AltaVista, and Lycos, get much less use in those countries than might be the case. Comments from users of country specific sites would be appreciated. Email me .]
(ESG 2, page 97)
(June, 2001)
AllTheWeb -(formerly FastSearch)
- AllTheWeb's own database has now been replaced by Yahoo's database, as has AltaVista's - not surprising, because Yahoo now owns AllTheWeb and AltaVista - and Yahoo's Web database is getting better than the recent databases of either AllTheWeb or AltaVista.. Search results in the three will be almost identical, but not quite. You may see some odds-and-ends in one that you don't see in another, such as perhaps a link to a matching LookSmart or Amazon listing, and perhaps some remnants of slightly different ranking algorithms. For the most part, consider them identical.
- AllTheWeb has significantly reduced its field searching capabilities . Options to search for language, links (link-to's), IP Address, and for embedded content (JavaScript, etc.) have all been removed from the advanced search page. You can still search for links by using the link: prefix in the main search box. However, it does not work well on partial URLs and you will want to include the entire URL, including the "www" if appropriate. (April 2004)
- AllTheWeb has apparently dropped its indexing of Flash content, which was probably not a really significant advantage anyway, but has added, in recent months, indexing of not just HTML and Adobe PDF files, but also Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and plain text. (For all of these, use the File Format window on the Advanced Search page.)
- You can now use AllTheWeb to perform Imperial/Metric Conversions - If you need to find conversions between these measurement systems, AllTheWeb's search box makes it easy. Enter the word "convert" followed immediately by a colon, then a space and the number and unit you want to convert. To convert 73.4 miles, for example, enter
convert: 73.4 mi
It works for all common units of length, time, speed, temperature, weight, area, and volume between both systems and either the full term or abbreviations and singular or plural units can be used. For details, try one, then, on the results page, click on the "Conversion Calculator Reference" link.The conversion calculator goes along nicely with another of AllTheWeb's "hidden" features, a numerical calculator – If you need to know the product of 456 and 56.98, just enter 46*56.98, hit the search button, and you have your answer. For addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponents use, respectively, +, -, *, /, and ^. You can also nest using parentheses, e.g., 15*(14+43)
- AllTheWeb has added a neat little feature called "URL Investigator." Type a URL (e.g., extremesearcher.com) into the search box and AllTheWeb will show you links to the owner, to pages that link to the site, that contain the URL phrase, and to The WayBack Machine archive entries for the site, plus the language, date last changed, document size, etc. (April 2003)
- As well as now indexing PDF files, AllTheWeb is now indexing Word files and Flash content it finds on pages it crawls. (December 2002)
- Only a couple weeks after AllTheWeb announced Flash indexing (see below), it has added even more options to its Advanced Search page:
- Under the Domain Filters section of the page, you will now see the "Limit to region" option which allows you to limit your results to only those pages from a particular region of the world (a feature that HotBot and AltaVista have had for several years.)
- Document Depth Filtering. Another feature pioneered by HotBot, but with a very important difference --- On AllTheWeb it actually works. Limiting your results to only top level, or perhaps second level, pages can be an effective way of getting more relevant results, particularly if your search results in a lot of hits.
- Personal Homepage search - This limits results to only personal home pages, identified by AllTheWeb by the tilde " ~ " in the URL . The approach is approximate, since many personal homepages, such as those on Geocities, do not contain a tilde.
Another change that you will see is that the page descriptions on results pages do not come from the Description metatag or the first portion of the page as used to be the case for many engines, but comes from the text surrounding the retrieved terms . Those who have been around information retrieval for a while recognize this as what has been called KWIC (Key Word In Context) for several decades. The new term you will find being used these days is "snippets." Indeed probably a more "user-friendly" term. Also, AllTheWeb is now "bolding" the search terms in the description, making results easier to scan.
(October 2002)
- AllTheWeb is now doing "real-time" indexing of news stories , gathering stories within minutes of when they appear on the newswires themselves. It gathers items from over 3,000 sources and is currently indexing up to 800 stories per minute. This is not only a very significant step forward in terms of Web search engine freshness, but also provides the kind of cross-file searching that news searchers have been yearning for. A number of sites have covered multiple newswires, but this also incorporates hundreds of newspapers. For a regular search, AllTheWeb displays the first two news items at the top of its results page, with a link to additional stories. If you enter your search, then choose "News" under the main query box before clicking "Search," your results will be limited to news. Click on "Advanced Search" and you have the advanced news search page that allows you the regular advanced options (language, domain, number of results per page) plus special news search options (news "sections"). Time frame choices here are at the level of hours and days.
In addition to the freshness of the news items, AllTheWeb is now updating its Web catalog every 9-11 days. (Google updates its catalog approximately every 28 days.)
url: To search for words in a URLCustomization options have also changed. In addition to the adult filter, language settings, and number of word filters, you can also customize the following:
The following were options on the Customize page, but are no longer there:
- the default catalog to be searched (Web pages, News, Pictures, Videos, MP3 files FTP files)
- the option of having either "Language or "Search type" (any of the words, all of the words, phrase) as the pull-down window on the main search page.
- Turning of the "autocomplete" option in your browser location window.
- having AllTheWeb automatically "re-write" your query (adding quotes around common phrases that are found in AllTheWeb's phrase dictionary and removing common words)
- highlighting hit terms
- clustering or unclustering ("collapsing") results from the same site.
- number of results per page
- opening results in a new browser window
- displaying search tips
- displaying "sidebar results" -- the box on results pages that shows the number of hits from the other AllTheWeb catalogs (pictures, videos, etc.)
- integrating the news results on results pages and the number of news items to show at the top of results pages.
(December 2001, modified May 2002) ( ESG2, pages 101, 105, 109)
- Though the easiest way to search various fields in AllTheWeb is to take advantage of the Advanced Search Page, AllTheWeb also allows fields to be searched by the use of a collection of prefixes:
Examples: url:utexas
url:utexas.edusite: To search for all or part of a URL
Examples: site:edu
site:ssu.edu
site:students.ssu.edu
The above two prefixes work almost identically, though it is recommended that if you use "site:", it should be combined with another term, e.g., plagiarism site:edu
link: - To search for pages that link to a specific page
(August 2001, Revised August 2003) ( ESG2, pages 106-107)Example: link:ilo.org
title: - To search for words in the title of the page
Example: title:camera
language: - To restrict results to a specific language
Example: language:french
filesize: - To limit your results to only those pages that are of a particular size
Remember that the default search in AllTheWeb is not to "all languages", but to your local language(s). If you want the above to work, click the "Any Language" button on the home page or Advanced Search page.
Examples: filesize:[5000;10000]
filesize:<10000
filesize:>5000
filetype: - To limit results to those in PDF, Flash, or MS Word formats
You will probably want to just use the corresponding option on the Advanced Search page.
Examples: filetype:pdf
filetype:word
filetype:flash
- FastSearch has now taken the new name of "AllTheWeb." Not surprising, since that has been its URL since the beginning. It has also redesigned the homepage, replacing the "Search Options" box ("all the words," any of the words," "the exact phrase") with a language box. The only other significant change on the homepage has been that the link to "Multimedia Search" has been replaced by "Pictures" and "Videos" links. It is also providing a list of "popular searches." The advanced page has not changed except for the name and the color scheme.
On results pages, you will find several changes:
- News headlines (that match words in your query
- A list of related searches under "Narrow your search."
- There is a "toggle" link to turn the adult filter ("offensive content reduction") on and off
- There is a "Search tip" displayed in a box on the right.
- A link is provided to corresponding results from AllTheWeb multimedia collections
FastSearch is also reporting that they are updating their database much more frequently. For a more detailed look at this see Gary Price's article on Searchenginewatch.com .
(July, 2001)
- Google has increased the number of terms you can enter in the search box to 32. This substantially larger number of terms is probably of most use when searching for quotations.
.
.
Summary of Major Changes and Additions to Google in 2004
- Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides access to a collection of "peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports". The availability of this scholarly material on Google is a result of agreements with publishers, associations, universities and others. This collection represents of chunk of material that was formerly invisible to search engines (the "invisible Web"). Much of the material you will find here (scholar.google.com ) is bibliographic, not full-text, and is delivered in more of a "bibliographic" format than regular Google records. When you click on results, most typically you will be taken to the site of bibliographic databases such as at PubMed, or to the publisher's site for a journal. Sometimes you will be able to get the to the full-text for free, but often you will not.
An Advanced search page permits you to search by title, author, publication, and publication date. You can also, on the main Google Search page, use Google's "OR" capability, the "intitle:", "allintitle:" and "site:" prefixes, and also the new "author:" prefix.
If Google has identified Web pages that cite the item, there will be a "Cited by" link indicating how many other records in Google Scholar have cited that item. Click on the "Cited by" link to go to the citing articles. In the case of the records you will find for books, a "Library Search" link leads to the WorldCat (OCLC) record which enables you to locate the book in a library near you. Web Search links in records do a Web "more like this" search. When you see an item that has "[CITATION]" in front of the title, it is an indication that Google did not actually find on the Web, but just found a citation in the other items.
This is a "start" on providing Web search engine access to the scholarly literature. It is a good start and can get you quick access to a selection of this very important material. However, if you really want to cover the scholarly literature in a scholarly manner, take advantage of the indexing and abstracting services you will find in academic, public, and special libraries.
- Size
Goggle now claims over 8 billion Web pages in its Web database.
- Groups "2"
The new Google Groups takes you beyond Usenet, which formerly constituted the entire Google Groups content. Google Groups now allows to to create your own groups and search the groups created by others. You can easily participate in these groups -- sending replies, starting new threads, etc. If you want to see where Google is headed with this, go over and look at Yahoo! Groups, since Google has unabashedly taken a lot of the new Groups structure from Yahoo!. You will find that the pages of Google Groups are strikingly similar to Yahoo!'s in terms of "look and feel."
- Cosmetic and Navigational Changes
Google made some cosmetic and navigational changes to its home page, providing easier access to some newer features, and bringing some (still) Beta features into more prominence. The "tabs" on the home page have been replaced by plain links, a Froogle link has been added, a "more" link has been added (leading to a wide range of other Google specialty searches), and the Directory tab has been removed and demoted to the "more" page. Among the options you will find on the "more" page are: Answers (hire-a-searcher), Catalogs, Directory, Froogle, Groups, Images, Google Labs, Google Local, News Search, Special Searches (US Government, Linux, BSD, Macintosh, Microsoft), University Search, Web Search, and Wireless. (Items in bold here are the ones not already on the home page.) By the way, the University Search has greatly expanded in terms of the number of universities covered, but actually is just a built-in "site search" anyone can do for any site, e.g. scholarships site:ssu.edu )
- Local Search.
This is still listed as in Beta, but since Google has now put it on the new "more" page, Local Search has gotten one step further toward "permanent". Google Local allows you to find US businesses (etc.) in a particular area (ZIP, address, City/State). To get to it, go either to the "more" page or by directly to Google Local at local.google.com Enter a search term, such as a type of store or restaurant, in the "Search terms" box and a US address, city and state, or ZIP code in the "Where" box to get stores, etc., in that area. Once on a local search results page, you will see a map with the locations of each of the businesses and you have the option of defining your search for a distance range (1,5,15 ,or 45 miles) . Click on the business's "yellow dot" on the map to get to further information and a list of the references (sources) from which Google's information came. Click on the "Directions" link in the listing of businesses and you will get driving directions.. The results come from a collection of directories, not from Google's Web database, so there are some companies that will not be uncovered this way.
- Numeric Range Search
For the serious searcher, this is a really important one. Google has added a Numeric Range search option on its Advanced Search page. This feature on Google's Advanced Search page allows one to specify a range of numbers (such as years, prices, model numbers, etc.) to narrow to pages that contain any of those numbers. In effect, you are doing an automatic "OR" for all of the numbers in the range. For example, if you want a search on the history of Kent Island, Maryland that mentions any year between 1740 and 1790, enter
history "kent island" marylandAlternatively, you can just enter the following in Google's main search box:
in the first box of the "Find Results" section of the page, then enter 1740 and 1790 in the Numeric Range boxes.history "kent island" maryland 1740..1799- Web Alerts
In addition to getting news alerts, you can now have Web Alerts automatically sent to you. Google is not making this too obvious yet, You can set up Web Alerts by either going to www.google.com/alerts or using the Alerts link you will find on News pages. Just as News Alerts provide an email that alerts you to new news stories on a particular topic, Web Alerts alert you, by email, of new (or changed) Web pages that contain the terms you included in your alert. Also like News Alerts, Web Alerts can be set for delivery once a day, as it happens, or once a week.
In setting up a Web Alert, you can use the same syntax as in a regular Google search (terms are automatically ANDed and you can use OR and quotation marks, and a minus sign for a "NOT"). An email notification will be sent to you that you will need to reply to (or at that point you can change your mind and cancel). You must click on the verification link in the email before your alert will be activated. You can manage all of your Google Alerts by means of the "Manage your Alerts" link you will find on the Alerts set-up page.
For either News Alerts or Web Alerts, you will receive notification for new items that appear in the top 10 records of your search.
- Changes in Google News
.
- Google has added news image thumbnails to its news search results.
- Google added a number of country-specific News search pages. To get to these, use the pull-down window next to the search box on the news page. There are now twenty-two of these sites. Keep in mind that if you want news from these countries, you will need to go to these country-specific sites. Their content is not included in the main Google News Search.
- Google's News Search (main version) now covers 4,500 sources
- Desktop Search
Google's Desktop Search is a free program that you can download that provides quick and easy searching of the files on your own computer. You can select which files are indexed and , when you search, you can select which of several types of file to which you wish to limit your retrieval. Also, if you wish, when you do a regular Google, search, you can have Google Desktop do a simultaneous search and include those results on the same page as your regular results. For details, see Google Desktop.
- GMail
In further imitation of Yahoo, Google unveiled (on a limited and "experimental" basis) its free email service in 2004. Gmail provides a Gigagbyte of free storage, good searchability of stored email messages, and only targeted banner ads (no pop-ups). For details, see Google's About GMail.
2002 and 2003 and Changes
- The Google Glossary has moved from beta to the "real thing." Type in: define term, e.g.,
define eschatologicaland in addition to a regular search you will get a "web definition." These are definitions that Google has found when crawling the Web pages in its collection.If you use the following syntax (define followed directly by a colon followed directly by your term):
define:eschatological
you will get all of the definitions Google has found on Websites.Note that this differs from the definitions you get by clicking the underlined terms in the "Searched the Web for ..." line at the top of your results in an ordinary search. The latter comes from established and very reputable dictionaries (and a gazetteer, etc.) The Google Glossary terms come from across the Web and may or may not be more accurate and may or may not be more up-to-date than the dictionary definition. "Caveat searcher " Google Glossary is a tremendous resource and, in one sense, is taking you directly to the kinds of sources that lexicographers themselves use as their source material for new definitions. You may find a much better and fuller definition than you may find in a dictionary. You may also find something that is out-of-date and much less authoritative than you will find in a standard dictionary. Go back to that basic researcher dictum, "Consider the source", and look at the site from which the "web definition" came. (October 2003)
- In it's "less-publicized-than-merited" race with AllTheWeb in providing additional features beyond ordinary Web searching, Google has produced a calculator and unit conversion feature that tries and probably succeeds in doing AllTheWeb one or more better. For its numerical calculator, as with AllTheWeb's, if you need to know the product of 456 and 56.98, just enter 46*56.98, hit the search button, and you have your answer. For addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponents use, respectively, +, -, *, /, and ^. You can also nest using parentheses, e.g., 15*(14+43). However with Google, you can do roots, trigonometric functions, logarithms, and factorials, and several other operations. For details, see Google's calculator help screen .
For unit conversions (e.g., feet to meters), Google stresses the lack of necessity to use a syntax. Google uses a "free text' approach that seems to work well. If you want to convert 32 meters to feet. try entering whatever seems natural, such as "32 feet to meters" or "32 ft to m". You can also combine calculations with conversions, e.g., "3*32 ft in m"
(September 2003)
- Google has increased the size of its database by over 200 million records . In the context of Google's total of over 3 billion records, that may not seem like much. But to add a little perspective, it was only about 4 years ago that Northern Light had the largest of all Web databases with an overall total of only 200 million pages. (August 2003)
- Google has added 5 country specific news collections to its News page. Click on the News tab on the main page, then go down to the bottom of the page, where you will see " International versions of Google News available in: Australia - Canada - India - New Zealand - U.K. - U.S." Clicking on one of these will take you to a Google news page that contains both general news items and country-specif ic news items. (May 2003)
- Google introduces Froogle (froogle.com). Froogle (clever name, eh?) a cousin of Google's under-recognized Google Catalogs (catalog.google.com) that includes the content of over 5,000 catalogs. However, Froogle goes beyond just listing the content of catalogs, and includes content that (1) is the result of Google's crawling of the Web to identify product sites and (2) content submitted by merchants. On Froogle's home page you will see a search box, a link to the Advanced Froogle Search page, and a directory that allows you to browse for products by category. Ranking of results is not dependent upon payment for listings, but relies on the same ranking technology used at Google.com. Merchants cannot buy search results listings but can buy "Sponsored Links" that are placed elsewhere on the results page. Unlike most other shopping sites, no purchases are made through Froogle directly. Actually, you will find that Froogle results may include items from other shopping sites such as eBay, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. (Note that only one matching item per store is displayed, but you can click the "all products regardless of store" link to see others.)
Froogle's Advanced Search page allows you to search by simple Boolean, price range, category, and also limit your search to product name or description. On results pages you can also narrow your search by category and price range. (January 2003)
- Google has officially (on 9/23/02) launched its news service , which has been in beta for several months (and Google is still referring to it as being in beta. Eternally beta may not be bad, it may be betta than beta.). Moving "one-up" on AllTheWeb's news service,
- Google's news covers over 4,000 sources (vs. AllTheWeb's 3,000), including biggies like the NY Times and small-town newspapers as well.
- Google , like AllTheWeb's service, is near real-time.
- Google is now retaining its records for 30 days (vs. AllTheWeb's 5 days or so).
There is now a News tab on Google's main page, but unlike AllTheWeb, Google at present does not have an Advanced News Search. Knowing Google, it will probably be along very shortly.As with AllTheWeb, when you do a regular search, Google automatically does a search on the news and puts matching headlines (up to three of them) at the top of your results list.
On Google's News page, in addition to the news search box, you will see:
For each item displayed on the News page or on news search results pages, there are links to other news sources that have carried the same or similar stories. On results pages you will see an option to sort by date or relevance.
- Headlines chosen by a Google algorithm that is "based on many factors including how often and on what sites a story appears elsewhere on the Web." Google emphasizes that the whole news compilation process is done without the intervention of human editors.
- Seven news categories. What articles go into which category is also done algorithmically.
Take advantage of both Google's and AllTheWeb's (and lots of other sites') news search services --- and remember the big bucks that you used to have to pay for this kind of news.
(September 2002)
- In its continuing crusade to make the "Invisible Web" more visible, Google has introduced a "Catalog" search, that provides extensive search capabilities for hundreds of consumer catalogs. The catalog can be accessed from Google's Advanced Search page (look under "Topic-Specific Search") or by going directly to catalogs.google.com .
Browsing using the categories on the main catalog page:
- On the main Catalog Search page, you can browse using ten categories or you can use the search box to search by topic or by catalog name
- Catalogs are listed alphabetically and there is a small pull-down window near the top of the page that allows you to pick a specific alphabetic range of catalog names to go to.
- Clicking on the catalog name or the image of the catalog cover will take you to a thumbnail view of about thirty pages
- Clicking on one of those pages takes you to a larger image of the page
- When you get to that page level, you will also find Google's catalog navigation bar on the page.
Navigation Bar
The catalog navigation bar:
- Appears on all page view screens
- Gives the catalog's date, phone number, URL and catalog code
- Provides a Previous and Next arrow to go from page to page
- Provides options of three page-views: single, double, thumbnail
- Provides a "Jump to page" box allowing you to go to a specific page by number
- Gives a search box
Google also provides an Advanced Catalog Search page that allows:
To order, Google recommends calling the phone number given for the catalog, or you can go the the URL given.
- Simplified Boolean (all of the words, any of the words, without the words) and a phrase search
- Searching within a specific category
- Searching within a specific catalog
- Search of all catalogs or only current ones.
- Adult filter ("SafeSearch")
Happy Shopping - And continue to be amazed by the great new things the folks out at Googleplex keep coming up with!
( ESG2 , page 121, January 2002)
- Google now allows the use of an asterisk for "wildcard" words (not to be confused with "truncation"). In the past you could use stopwords to accomplish the same thing, but since "the" (and "OR") are now the only stopwords, "the" would have been used to accomplish this (See ESG2 , page 117.)
Example: "erasmus the the rotterdam" will retrieve "Erasmus University of Rotterdam"
Now you can, more simply, use the asterisk for "unknown" words in a phrase search. As with the previous use of stopwords to allow for variable words (proximity), the use of each asterisk insists on the presence of one word. For example:
"erasmus * rotterdam"
If you want "Franklin Roosevelt" and also "Franklin D Roosevelt" and also "Franklin Delano Roosevelt", you would search for:
will retrieve "Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam" and "Erasmus von Rotterdam"
It will not retrieve most of the "Erasmus Rotterdam" records (if there were any)."erasmus * * rotterdam"
will retrieve "Erasmus University of Rotterdam"
but not most of the "Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam" records
"Franklin Roosevelt" OR "Franklin * Roosevelt"(January 2002) ( ESG2, page 117) [Thanks to Gary Price for alerting me to this via his Virtual Acquisition Shelf .]
- Google is now indexing over 3 billion [this number updated here as of Spring 2003] Web pages, plus700 million newsgroup postings (now going back 20 years), 330 million images , and several million PDF, Word, Excel, and other documents. The newsgroup postings represent the entire UseNet archive.
The news postings come from a variety of newswires. The first three news matches are shown at the top of results pages. Additional matches are integrated into the regular Google results listing. Google indexes its news sources on a daily basis, which would be impressive, except for the fact that AllTheWeb is now indexing a greater number of news sources on a near "real-time" basis. The number of news sources indexed by Google is also considerably smaller than those indexed by AllTheWeb. Also unlike AllTheWeb, Google does not provide any capability for searching only the news.
(December 2001) ( ESG2, Chapter 6)
- Good news on the "stopword" front -- Google has abolished all stopwords except "the" and "or" from its stopword list. You can now search "erasmus of rotterdam" just as you would ordinarily write it, since "of" is no longer a stopword. You no longer have to
use the plus sign to force a search of the couple dozen or so words that were formerly not searchable directly."Or" is still a special case. If you want to use it as the OR Boolean operator, capitalize it. If you want it as part of a phrase, put the phrase in quotes. If you enter it without quotes and in lower case, it will be ignored.red OR black gets all the red and all the black
"red or black" gets that exact phrase
red or black the or is ignored and you get the same results as if you had entered it without the orYou can still fake proximity, and allow for a variable word(s), by taking advantage of the special treatment of "the." See ESG2, page 117, but use "the" as the "stand-in" word.
- Google continues it forays into the invisible Web - - Not only is it now indexing PDF files (see below), but it now indexes a variety of other document formats it finds links to on Web pages, including: Adobe PostScript (ps)
- Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
- Lotus WordPro (lwp)
- MacWrite (mw)
- Microsoft Excel (xls)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
- Microsoft Word (doc)
- Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
- Microsoft Write (wri)
- Rich Text Format (rtf)
- Text (ans, txt)
You won't yet run cross a lot of these, since they don't actually occur that frequently on Web pages. For most of these file types, Google has indexed, at present, from a hundred thousand to a couple million documents.If you have the urge to locate any of these specific file types, the easiest way is by using the "File Format" option on Google's Advanced Search page. If you are addicted to prefixes, along with the est of your search, use the "filetype:" prefix with the file extensions as shown above, for example:filetype: pptAs with the PDF files, another nice feature that Google provides is the option of viewing the contents of these files in HTML format as well as the "native" format. Very useful if you don't have the corresponding software such as MS Word. Just click on the "View as HTML" link in the record.Be aware that Google does not do any virus detection on these.
- Google has redesigned its home page and made a number of options more prominent. Links to the Google Groups search and the directory (Open Directory) were already shown on the home page, but the link to the Image Search was not as accessible. All three are now given more prominence as tabs above the search box (on the main page and most other pages.)
The Preferences and language options are now also more easily accessible. Instead of just a link for Preferences, there are now links to Preferences and Language Tools (with some overlap). The Preferences link leads to the following options:Language Tools provides:
- Language search and interface preference
- # of results per page
- Option to have results opened in new window
- Safe Search option (adult content filter)
- A search box with windows to limit retrieval to a specific language or a specific country-of-origin.
- A box for translating a specific Web page between English and five languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or Russian) or between French and German.
- Choice of having the Google interface in any one of over 60 languages.
- Links to the Google country-specific versions for 23 countries.
(October 2, 2001, ESG2. pages 112-113)
- Google's newsgroup search is now available directly from its homepage. For those who don't already know, Google took over the defunct deja.com database and quickly got it up and going. Google rapidly added enhancements and now has all or virtually all of the functionality of the old deja.com -- plus an easier interface, since deja.com had, during its last couple years, pretty well obscured the newsgroup search in favor of an obviously unsuccessful shopping-oriented homepage, leading to its decline (Sic semper stupidity.)
The groups are browsable by hierarchy and extensively searchable, particularly by using the Advanced search option that allows searching by hierarchy, by date, language, Boolean, etc. Threads are easy to follow and after registering, you can easily post to groups. Google provides extensive help screens for Groups, including one that relates former deja functions to Google Groups functions. The database goes back to 1995. Google Groups is now THE way to search newsgroups. (July 2001)- Date searching is now available on Google's Advanced Search page . You can only search by broad time frames (anytime, last 3 months, last 6 months, past year), but it is a step in the right direction and eliminates a fairly obvious weakness in Google's field searching capabilities.
- Google is no longer searching the Realnames database and incorporating the RealNames company record into results pages (ESG2, page 120)
- Google now has image searching. To get to it, look for the "Image Search" box on Google's Advanced page. At the moment, it is retrieving somewhat fewer images than does FastSearch, but the gap seems to have been narrowing since it was first released. There is much less search functionality than in either AltaVista's or FastSearch's image searching, but, knowing Google, this is also likely to change soon. At the moment, you receive 20 thumbnails, and when you click on the image, you are taken to the actual site, but in a Google frame (which can be removed by a link at the top of the page.
- Translations are now available. For pages where the original language is Italian, French, Spanish, German, or Portuguese, you will see a link to "Translate this Page." Clicking on that will take you directly to a translated page (unlike AltaVista which inserts and additional required step.) From Google's Preferences page, you can also specify that non -English results listings automatically be translated into English.
- A phone book lookup can now be done on Google, directly from the search box.
For a business, type a business name and either city and state or zip code.
For individuals, give the first name or initial, the last name, and either state, area code or zip. It will also work without either the first name or initial.
- PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) Files on Google. Formerly, this type of file was pretty strictly a part of the "invisible Web," and not identifiable or retrievable by general Web search engines. Google now makes over 26 million of these files accessible
In Google results pages, you will recognize these by [PDF] in the file names.[PDF] www.marketdirect.org/gdf2000/iran.pdf
To limit your search to just PDF, use inurl:pdf as part of your query. Clicking on the main link in results records will cause your Acrobat Reader to appear, with the PDF file. Clicking on the "Text version" link will display a text version in your regular browser window.
(June, 2001)
- Google has launched a Canadian version at www.google.ca . It is supposed to focus more on Canadian content, but the only really obvious difference is the option on the homepage for either the French or English versions of the interface. Search results seem to be the same for this and Google's main version.
HotBot News and Changes
- HotBot has removed Lycos (the AllTheWeb database) from the list of alternative databases you can search automatically from the HotBot interface, leaving only HotBot (Inktomi), Google, and AskJeeves (the Teoma database.) It may be getting close to the time to say goodbye to HotBot. (March 2004)
- A database by any other name . . . : The four databases that HotBot allows you to search (see below) were initially, when HotBot introduced its new interface at the end of 2002, referred to as Inktomi, Fast, Google, and Teoma. HotBot is still providing access to the very same databases, but is now referring to three of them by more recognizable names. Inktomi is now referred to as "HotBot," Teoma as "Ask Jeeves" and Fast as "Lycos." Substantively, nothing has changed. Inktomi has always been the database behind the original HotBot, the Fast database is the one behind both AllTheWeb and Lycos, and AskJeeves uses the Teoma database. This change in nomenclature will indeed give a lot of users a better ideea of what's going on. (July 2003) See item above regarding removal of the Lycos option.
- For the first time since 1997, HotBot has made significant changes in its interface, and they are very significant.
- The old main page interface, with several pull-down windows for basic search features, is gone.
- The new interface has a single search box, but with radio buttons allowing your search to be done in either the FAST (AllTheWeb's) database, Google's database, Inktomi (HotBot's old, main database), or Teoma. Results will show the first ten records from the selected database (with the usual links at the bottom to get to the rest of the results), and a few "sponsored links" (ads) at the top. The latter remain the same, regardless of which database you searched. The records are all in a "HotBot" format, with the page title, about two lines of description, the URL, and the page size (in KB). You do NOT get the numerous additional output and features that you will find if you search Google, AllTheWeb, or Teoma directly.
- The Advanced Search link is where the real innnovation has occured, with a page that looks like the old HotBot Advanced page, but contains sections that are tailored to the capabilities of the original engine being searched, allowing you to take advantage of the specific field searching available in that engine, and other features such as offensive content reduction. Once you have filled out the form, and search the first database, all you need to do is click on the radio button for another database and the search is transferred to it. If any of the "fields", for example, that you specified are not supported by the new database you selected, the search will still be done, but you will receive a message that the specific feature is not supported there.
This is not a "metasearch engine" (at least not like other metasearch engines). It does not combine results of the target engines, it does not limit your retreiveal to the first ten records a metaserch engines do, etc. What it is can probably be best described as a "common interface" for several engines.Advantages of the New HotBot- It allows a quick and easy comparison of search results for three major and one minor search engine (Teoma).
- It allows the user to vary easily take advantage of powerful advanced search options (such as field searching) in each of those engines without dealing with rather different interfaces for each. Very important to the serious searcher.
Disadvantages of the New HotBot
- Results are watered down. You only get the "plain vanilla" display for each record and do not see the numerous and very valuable special features that each of the engines provides when you search them directly.
Try it, see what you think, and if you have a moment, let me know what you think. (Ran ) December 2002
- Left-hand truncation is gone again . (March 2002)
Lycos News and Changes
- Lycos announced, on July 1, 2002, its new Version 6.0. With a gigantic Web database, good search functionality (on its Advanced Search page), and a good portal interface, Lycos is definitely back in the Web search engine game. Actually, most of the changes had already been in effect for a while, but they are changes that every serious searcher should be aware of. Most importantly, for a while now, Lycos has been using the FAST (AllTheWeb) database.
Lycos, in its press release , claims it is the world's "Largest Full-Text Catalog on the Internet" So, if it is using the same database as AllTheWeb, isn't it tied for 1st place? Probably so, for all practical purposes. Some benchmarking shows that, for searches done on both, the number of results usually aren't identical but almost so (within 1-2%: 92 vs. 94, 31,805 vs. 31,178, 186 vs.186). Sometimes Lycos has a handful more, sometimes AllTheWeb does.
Also as a consequence of using the AllTheWeb database, you will now find PDF files among search results.
Using the FAST database also puts it at the top in terms of "freshness," with the database being refreshed every seven days, vs about twice that for Google (according to Lycos.)
The appearance of the home page changed a few months ago, with considerable reorganization of the page. Most of the choices that were available as shown in the 2nd edition of ESG are still there, just in different places on the screen.
Lycos is now (along with almost every other search engine) "clustering" its results, listing only the first (most relevant) page from any particular Website, with a "More results from" link to get to additional pages from the site.
Search terms from your query are now being highlighted.
The Lycos press release indicates that the FAST news database of 3,000 sources, refreshed every minute, is being used. At the moment, however, this seems not to have kicked in, since identical searches on the two engines produces a very significantly smaller set of results on Lycos vs. AlltheWeb.
"Fast Forward" - On results pages you will now find a "Fast Forward" option next to the title of each result. Clicking on this will bring up a window with that page on the right and a "condensed" version of the Lycos search results on the left.
Lycos' Advanced Search provides rather extensive searching functionality, including field searching (title, URL, link-to, language), and simple Boolean (Must Include, Should Include, Must Not Include).
So, since Lycos and AllTheWeb produce such similar results, how do you decide which to use:
Use Lycos when:
You want a "portal" with lots of features other than just Web searching.
Use AllTheWeb, when:
You like a simple search interface.
You want to do an image search.
You need to do a news search, especially if you want an Advanced News Search interface.Lycos has the potential of being the leading "portal-oriented" search engine. However, though the Lycos home page can be personalized, the resulting page is too cluttered with ads and other "non-content," including an un-deletable "On Lycos Now" ad section and a large ad across the bottom of the page. Less than 40% of the Lycos personalized page is devoted to content. This leaves "My Yahoo" and Excite as the best personaliazble portal interfaces.
(July 2002)
- Lycos has radically re-designed its home page. If you look closely, however, there is virtually nothing there that was not there before and nothing that was there before that is not there now.
- "Connect," and "Find," and "Connect" links are now in the upper left-hand corner under "Tools." Lycos' Top 50 has moved to a more prominent location near the bottom of the page.
- "Lycos Topics, " its collection of Channels/Directory, is now very attractively placed in the left column .
- "Shopping" is still central both in terms of prominence and proximity
(ESG page 140-141) (December 2001)
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Northern Light News and Changes
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- Northern Light has announced that its free Web search will be discontinued as of January 16, 2002. This is very sad news for all serious searchers. "Enterprise" customers will continue to have access to the 350 million pages in its Web index.
Yahoo Changes
e
- Video Search Added - You will now see a link to Video Search above Yahoo's main search box (or you can go directly to video.yahoo.com.) Yahoo!'s Video Search is structured very similarly to its Image Search. Enter one or more search terms, click the Search Video button, and results pages will show thumbnail frames, sizes and URL's for up to twenty videos (with links at the bottom of the page for more). As with image searching on more than two terms are likely to give zero results. Click on one of the thumbnails on a results page and you will be given a page with information about the video at the top of the screen and a frame with the original source page at the bottom.
Yahoo is providing an Advanced Video Search page where you can limit your search by format (AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, Windows Media, or Real), size (small, medium large), duration (less than or more than one minute), and domain (any, .com, .edu, .gov., .org, or another specific domain or site.) A SafeSearch Filter option is also provided. A Preferences link provides the same preferences settings as in a Web search (open results in a new window, number of results, filtering level, and language).
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- Yahoo! has re-designed the My Yahoo page. Most significantly, it has radically rearranged the "Add Content" pages. You will find a whole new list of categories and one category in particular deserves attention - - News & Media. In that category you can now choose from 200,000 sources (most of that number comprised of Weblogs and other RSS feeds), and place those "modules" on your My Yahoo! page. In this way, you have stories from those sources automatically fed to you so you can see headlines or summaries, and then go from there directly to the source.
Yahoo! has made My Yahoo! one of the easiest places to locate, receive and manage RSS feeds. Up to 100 of them can be placed as modules on a My Yahoo! page, and you can add up to five more pages to your My Yahoo!.In addition to using the My Yahoo "Add Content" page to locate RSS sources of interest, you may have noticed that some stories you find in various places on the Web, even outside of Yahoo!, have an "Add to MY Yahoo!" button next to them. When you find such a story you can just click the button and the source will be added to your My Yahoo! page.
If you run across a site that indicates it has an RSS feed, by a little orange "XML" or "RSS" button, but does not have the Add to My Yahoo! button, you can still add it to your My Yahoo! page. Click on the XML button on the site you found. Ignore the page of code that comes up, but go up to your browser's address bar and copy the URL. Then go to My Yahoo! and click on the Add Content button. To the right of the Search box (in the "Find" section of the Add Content page) you will see a link for "Add RSS by URL". Click on that and copy the URL you found into the URL entry box on that page. Yahoo! will ask you if you really want to add it. Say yes by clicking "the "Add" button. When you go to My Yahoo!, you will have that source on your page.
- Yahoo! Mail now provides up to 250 megabytes of storage.
- Yahoo has ceased its PayDirect option. To pay for Yahoo Auction items, etc., you may wish to use PayPal instead.
- Yahoo! Desktop Search
With Desktop Search, Yahoo! provides a fast and effective search of the contents of your own computer. The free downloadable program indexes the contents of you computer and then allows you to search that content. You can use it to search your email, your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, and search for music, images, and over 200 other file types. In using this program, you have a variety of options regarding which kinds of files get indexed. For many types of files, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, HTML, and text files, Yahoo Desktop Search indexes the complete text of the file. In the case of images, audio, video, and executable files (.exe and .zip), it only indexes information such as file name, files type.From the results of a Desktop search, you can preview the results before you open the files, play audio and video content without having to first launch a separate player, and save your searches. When you do a regular Web search, you can simultaneously search your own computer and have your "local" results appear on the same page as your Web results. With email search results, you can go directly from emails you locate using Desktop Search to a reply, forward, or print.
Yahoo! Desktop Search requires that you have at least Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP3 or SP4. The program is about 8 MB in size and takes about three minutes to download, using a high speed connection. If you don't see a link on Yahoo!'s main page for downloading Desktop Search, you can go directly to desktop.yahoo.com.
- Yahoo has been rapidly increasing the size of its database. They have not released a size number, but a quick (unscientific) benchmarking using six searches found Yahoo retrieving more than Google in 5 out of the six searches. (April 2004).
- Yahoo has been shifting its emphasis to "search" (vs. directory) for some time now, particularly over the last few months. With its acquisition of Inktomi, we have been waiting for it to switch from using Google to Inktomi. It has now switched from Google, but to a new search engine of its own, but not Inktomi. Image search is still from Google, and the News search is Yahoo's own, as it has been for a long time.
As for search features available from the main Yahoo search box, you can use quotation marks (for phrases), OR (to "OR" terms), and a minus sign (for NOT, e.g., labor -pregnancy).Search results look a like like Google results now, especially with the cache link that serves the same function, and in the same way, as Google's cache. The little double-window symbol you will find in Yahoo results allows you to open the link in a separate window.As in the old Yahoo search, at the top of results you will find matching news items and any matching categories from Yahoo's directory. Look for the "related" [searches] links and also remember the Images, Directory, Yellow Pages, News, and Products tabs for searches for those kinds of materials. For some searches you will get, as before, "Inside Yahoo" links that lead you to Yahoo sections such as Travel.
If you have not looked at Yahoo's Advanced Search page in a while, take a look now. Using it, you can search by: title, URL, time frame, domain, file format, country, and language. You also will find the adult content filter and an option for the number of pages to be displayed. (February 2004)
- Yahoo has introduced a new product search engine (Look for "Product Search" on Yahoo's home page or go to Yahoo Shopping at shopping.yahoo.com). You will find that this looks a lot like Google's product search engine, Froogle , with product pictures, brief descriptions, and links to the Web page on which the product was found. The contents of Yahoo's product database come both from Yahoo-affiliated merchants (those who sell products directly through Yahoo's shopping site) and products that are found by crawling the Web. According to Yahoo, ranking of product search results is done independently of any payments by the advertiser. Ads relevant to the search are placed on the right side of the results page. There is an advanced search page that allows you to apply simple Boolean ("all of these words", "any of these words", "none of these words") and specfy that your terms be treated as a phrase. You can also limit your results to any one of thirteen product categories and to a specific price range. The categories and price range limits are also available on all results pages, as is an option to sort results by price.
Also look on results pages for a variety of other useful links. For some products you will find, next to the product description, "Shopping Tools" links for "Compare Prices", "Full Specs" and "User Reviews". You may find an "open book" icon that provides a link to a buyers guide. Many products are also assigned a one-to-five star rating bsed on purchasers' evaluations.The number of results you will typically find is much much lower than you will find for the same product searched in Froogle. However, Yahoo's new product search is brand new and you can expect a lot of rapid growth. (September 2003)
- Be aware that now when you do a "search" on Yahoo, it will give you Google results for "Web pages" (but without the many nice additional features you will find if you do the search on Google itself.
- Yahoo has redesigned its home page, with a number of cosmetic changes, but also in a way that makes its portal features more obvious. As a matter of fact, the directory itself is now placed below the fold, with the portal features above the fold. This is particularly interesting, since for the serious searcher, it is the portal features that are probably more important. For myself, I practically never use Yahoo for a "search," and only occasionally as a "directory," I do though use it as my start page because of its excellent personalizable portal and I use Yahoo Groups and a number of other features. When you have time, spend a half-hour or so (you may find yourself spending much longer) looking at the other features found on Yahoo's home page. Yahoo Groups, particularly, are tremendously valuable. (September 2002)
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