Searching with AltaVista:

Think of searching as a multi-step process. Spend your time refining your search results rather than trying to click through all 10,000 documents that come back the first time you enter your search string.

Helpful Tips:

• Use rare words. Be as specific as possible. -- music, musicals, Evita (narrow in).
• Use phrases when you know the exact word order --did you forget the exact words to a particular quote? Try searching for the words you can remember.
• Use Capitalization to find proper nouns, including people, corporations, places, etc.
• Use wildcards when you aren't sure of the words, or want to include all possible variations. --president* (includes presidents, presidential, etc.) --planet* (includes planets, planetary, planetarium, etc.)
• Search according to structural elements.
  • title:Italy for sites with "Italy" in the title of the document. Great for finding very general links (e.g. country reports).
  • domain:mil for searches only within U.S. Military web servers (other domains include .net, .gov, .com, .edu, .org, and a host of country specific domains).
  • url:socialstudies.com/activities searches for all documents within the folder at this url location. A great way to narrow your searches within sites.
  • host:socialstudies.com when you want to search for all the documents that AltaVista has recorded for a particular site.
  • link:socialstudies.com looks at all the sites that have hypertext links to this web site. You can also narrow this request to links for a specific document on the web (e.g. link:socialstudies.com/activities/mecca.html).
  • Enter your query as a question. Then try to narrow it down. For example, you might focus in on a site which looks rich and just search that site for more information. Or, you can search for pages that are linked to the page you like -- a good way to find similar pages.

  Exercises:

  1. Begin with a general question.
  2. Choose one of the better responses and search for more information on that site or in that particular folder on that site (url:). See how specific you can get.
  3. Search for information within a particular domain (e.g., domain:gov) to limit the terms of your search (domain:au would search for documents only within that country).
  4. Search on a controversial subject (try, www.hatewatch.org). Find a particularly propagandistic page. Search for all the pages that have links to that page (link:) to get a better idea of that "community of interest."
  5. Use wildcards * when you want all the variations for a word and quotation marks "" when you know the exact word order.
  6. Search for a famous document by title using appropriate capitalization or by citing a phrase from it between quotation marks "".
  7. Search only the titles of documents on the web when you are looking for very general information. For example, I need pictures and information about Hong Kong. I can search the titles of documents (title:) to focus on only those sites where the subject was central enough to have been included as the title of that page (i.e., not just a passing reference).

  Examples:

  Example I) I want to look for a famous primary source document by searching for a phrase within it. But the results can still be too general. After all, people love to quote from famous documents on their own home pages. For example, look at the difference between these two searches:

  "when in the course of human events" (2520 documents)
  "when in the course of human events" domain:gov (7 documents)

  Example II) Searching for similar pages when one encounters a broken link. If you search for all pages that had a link to the one you want, there is a good chance you will find something that you can use.

  I encountered this broken link in a lesson that I had written on the peace process in Israel/ Palestine. The link I had to the Palestinian Declaration of Independence was missing.

  http://www.alquds.org/www/intro/declare.html

  First I search within the site to see if I can find the missing document.

  host:www.alquds.org/ declare (url: doesn't work either). But nothing comes up. Altavista has no record of the site.

  So I need to look for other sites that are similar to the one I had.

  link:http://www.alquds.org/

  I might also try searching for the document itself. Palestinaian Declaration of Independence.

  Boom. Use appropriate capitalization for primary source documents and "" can help to narrow your search even further.

  Example III) We can also limit our searches to information from within a particular country: For example:

  domain:au business development

  Searches only those sites in the .au (Australian) domain which have business and development on their pages. This might be better if we know that we want the words in that exact order:

  domain:au "business development"

  Try other country information:

  Search for the listing of countries:

  Where can I find a listing of country domain names

  Drat. Nothing. How about this:

  Where can I find a listing of "countr* domain names"

  Bingo. First on the list.

  aq Antarctica ar Argentina at Austria au Australia be Belgium br Brazil ca Canada ch Switzerland cl Chile de Germany dk Denmark ec Ecuador ee Estonia es Spain fi Finland fr France gr Greece hk Hong Kong hu Hungary ie Ireland il Israel in India is Iceland it Italy jp Japan kr South Korea mx Mexico nl Netherlands no Norway nz New Zealand pl Poland pt Portugal re Reunion (French) se Sweden sg Singapore su Former Soviet Union (now CIS) th Thailand tn Tunisia tw Taiwan uk United Kingdom us United States yu Yugoslavia za South Africa

  For an exhaustive list of country domain names go to Mapping the World by Heart.

  Try these:

  domain:ch "dormant accounts"
  domain:hk chin* takeover
  domain:sg school* internet K-12
  

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