Search Tools and Strategies for the World Wide Web and
Usenet News Groups, and Lists
 
The following tips are based on information in _The
AltaVista Search Revolution_.  Analogous techniques may
work with other search engines.  AltaVista was introduced
on December 15, 1995.  By the fall of 1996, AltaVista was
indexing 50 million web pages and getting 19 million hits
a day.
 
Good techniques help the searcher move past hit-or-miss
to refine strategies to better access the full scope of
Internet files.
 
AltaVista Simple Search
 
     In any order, use all relevant terms, choose
     unusual terms (unusual w/o Internet files), proper
     names
 
     In exact order, use phrases enclosed by " marks 
 
     Case sensitive - lower case matches upper and lower
     (next matches NeXT), upper case matches only upper
     case (NeXT does not match next)
 
     wild card * may match one word (one if * land) or,
     as a placeholder, after any three specific letters, 
     for up to five lower case letters, (glo* matches
     global, glory, ... )
 
     if there is more than one word in a search, there
     is a hit if any of the words are present
 
     if a word is preceded by + that word must be
     present
 
     if a word is preceded by - that word will not be present
 
AltaVista Advanced Search
 
     allows the construction of a targeted inquiry
     constructed query may be bookmarked to use again
 
     operators - NEAR (within ten words); Boolean NOT
     AND OR; parentheses
 
     may restrict by date
 
     may add criteria for ranking hits, ordering display
 
Search Revolution_, Osborne McGraw-Seltzer, Richard, 
Eric Ray, Deborah Ray, _The AltaVista Hill, 1997.
 
 
LISTSERV Tools
 
E mail LISTSERV@listserv.net the command
LIST GLOBAL /<string>  (example: LIST GLOBAL /health)
 
 
LDBASE-L on LISTSERV@UKANVM.CC.UKANS.EDU
discussion of LISTSERV archive search engine