Information about these search tools has been gleaned from the tools themselves, so judge accordingly.
SUBJECT DIRECTORIES: | Librarians' Index to the Internet | Yahoo |
SEARCH ENGINES: | Alta Vista | Excite | HotBot | Infoseek | Lycos | Northern Light |
METASEARCH ENGINE: | Inference Find |
Database: A subject guide to Internet resources constructed by
librarians.
Contents: Around 6,000 links to Internet resources
briefly annotated, with assigned subject headings.
Searching: Basic searches can be limited to the title of the resource,
the description, the assigned subject headings, or partial URLs in the
links in addition to
searching across the entire record. Advanced
Search offers multiple field and Boolean searches, ability to turn
stemming off, and limits to category of record (Best of..., Directories,
Databases, or Specific Resources).
Results: Results are displayed in alphabetic order by the
resource titles.
Address: http://lii.org/
Update frequency: daily
Additional information: This subject directory is specifically
aimed at the needs of California public library users, but in so doing it
often identifies the essential resources on a variety of topics.
Contact: The service is managed by Carole Leita: cleita@sunsite.berkeley.edu.
Databases: A subject guide and search service of
Internet
resources, news, maps, classified advertising, stock quotes, sports
scores,
businesses, telephone numbers, personal Web pages, and email addresses
(separate databases).
Contents: Main
directory: Links (URLs) to
Internet resources and brief descriptive text for those links.
Searching: All Yahoo pages include a simple search box,
but the Yahoo Search page offers options
for searching Yahoo!, Usenet, or Email Addresses. Searches can also be
limited to listings added in the last day, week, month, or three years.
Boolean operators (and, or) and string
searching are also supported. Note: if no results are retrieved
in Yahoo, the search is automatically passed to Alta Vista, which then searches
its database and passes the results back via Yahoo. If Yahoo cannot make
the connection fast enough with Alta Vista it will provide a page of
links
to a number of search tools. When one of those links is selected, your
search
words are automatically passed to the search engine on your behalf.
SEARCH TIP: Yahoo! is a subject directory, which means it will not
list many pages that search engines will typically retrieve (such as
Joe Schmoe's page of hot links). Use a few words that describe your topic
or that may be found on a high-level page (the first page you would see
when visiting a site) for an organization or company.
Results: Links are returned along with their descriptive
text, and the subject hierarchy under which it can be found in Yahoo is
also displayed. The search term(s) appear in bold on the results screen.
Address:
http://www.yahoo.com/
Update
frequency: daily
Additional Information: More information can be found at
the Yahoo Information Center,
including Yahoo
Help.
Contact: See the Writing to Yahoo! page or
send email to webmaster@yahoo.com
Databases: World Wide Web pages and Usenet News.
Contents: Millions of Web pages and
the full-text of over 14,000 newsgroups updated in real-time.
Searching: Offers a simple search or advanced
query mode. Simple search can handle simple queries as well as
much more advanced searching by using a particular search syntax. To
find out all your searching options, see the Simple
Search Help. Advanced query mode offers boolean (and,
or, not) and simple adjacency (near) operators, as well as an option for
additional words to use to rank the search results (occurrence of the
word(s) within retrieved documents will make them sort higher in the
list).
SEARCH TIP: Try "title:"Your Phrase"" as a first search. That is,
a search like title:"Digital Library" will restrict the search
to
that mixed-case phrase found in the titles of Web documents.
Results: Offers three results options (but two give the
same result): 1) "Standard" results (the default option) with the link
followed by the machine-generated item abstract in an indented paragraph
with the URL at the bottom, the file size and the last update date.
Results are returned ten items on a screen, 2) "Compact" puts each item on
one line (the link on the left, followed by the last update date of the
file, then the machine-generated abstract scrolling off the screen to the
right), and 3) "Detailed", which is the same as "Standard".
Address: http://altavista.digital.com
Update Frequency: Constantly by Web robot ("Scooter").
Contact: See the Write to AltaVista
page.
Databases: World Wide Web pages, news, maps, yellow pages,
shareware, stock
quotes, TV listings, weather, email addresses, airline flights.
Contents: Millions of Web pages and more than two weeks of Usenet
news.
Searching: Offers only a Simple
Search option which supports some advanced search options (see Search
Tips below).
SEARCH TIPS: Use a plus sign (+) to specify that ALL documents
have that word, or use a minus sign (-) to specify that NONE of the
documents have that word. Excite also supports full Boolean operators
and syntax. You can use AND, OR and AND NOT operators and parentheses
for grouping. For example: (digital or virtual or electronic) AND
library For many more tips on searching Excite, see Constructing and Refining Searches in Excite.
Results: Results are displayed with the document title, a
relevance rank in percent, the URL, a software-generated document
summary, and an option to retrieve "More Like This" which, presumably,
would use that document as your query.
Address: http://www.excite.com/
Update Frequency: Constantly by Web robot.
Contact: Visit the Feedback page.
Databases: World Wide Web pages, Usenet newsgroups, white and yellow pages, stocks, shareware, etc.
Contents: Millions of Web pages in the Web index (the default search option).
Searching: Offers a Simple
Search and an Expert
Search.
Simple search supports the Boolean
AND and OR operators, phrase searching, and choices "the person" or "the
URL". Expert search also supports date limits, media type (VRML, Audio,
Javascript, etc.) and location (country, etc.).
SEARCH TIP: Enclose phrases in double quotes (e.g., "phrase
words").
Results: Results are displayed with the document title, a
relevance rank in percent, a brief software-produced abstract, the URL,
document size, and a date of unknown origin.
Address: http://www.hotbot.com/
Update Frequency: Constantly by Web robot ("Slurp").
Additional Information: More information is available from the
HotBot Help page.
Contact: Use their customer
support form or send
email to support@hotbot.com.
Databases: World Wide Web pages, sounds, pictures,
"top 5% sites", and UPS tracking number (yes, you heard it right), in
separate databases.
Contents: Millions of Web pages in the Web index (the default search option).
Searching: Offers a Simple Search and a Custom Search. Simple
search supports a few options for specifying how your search words are to
be treated (see Lycos Help
for more information). Custom Search supports Boolean AND and OR, as well
as some other settings that are virtually incomprehensible.
Results: Results are listed in ranked order; information
includes document address (URL), title, file size, and an excerpt from
the file.
Address: http://www.lycos.com/
Update frequency: Constantly by Web
robot.
Additional Information: See the Answers to Common Questions
page.
Contact: See the Lycos Contact Information
page or send email to webmaster@lycos.com
Databases: World Wide Web pages and a "special
collection" of journal articles.
Contents: An unspecified number of Web pages and
approximately 1 million journal article citations.
Searching: Boolean operators "or" and "not" are
supported, as are quotes around phrases and "+" to precede a word that
must be present in the results, and "-" to precede a word that must not
appear in the results.
Results: Initial results are presented in order by
computed relevance, along with folders and sub-folders of results by
concept or site of origin; information provided for each link
includes document address (URL), title, relevance rank in percent (100%
is the best), and an excerpt from the file.
Address: http://www.nlsearch.com/
Update frequency: Constantly by Web
robot ("Gulliver", which will show up in access logs at
taz.northernlight.com).
Additional Information: See Help and Hints.
Contact: See Northern Light
Contact Information.
Database: None; it searches the databases of other search
engines.
Searching: Since the search you enter is processed by a number of
separate search engines with different features, whatever you enter
beyond a few keywords may not be interpreted the same way in each search
engine. Inference Find provides one setting for how long the system
should wait for results to be returned from the various databases being
searched.
Results: Results from different search engines are merged and
then grouped according to main topic or site of origin.
Address: http://www.infind.com/
Additional Information: More information is available at the
Inference Find Web site.
Contact: Send
email to webmaster@infind.com.
Copyright
©
2000 by the UC Regents All rights reserved.
Document maintained at
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Help/searchdetails.html
by the SunSITE Manager.
Last update February 8, 2000. SunSITE Manager:
manager@sunsite.berkeley.edu
