mona lisa -- Finds documents that contain either mona or lisa or any capitalized variant (Mona, MONA, liSA, Lisa). AltaVista ranks the results to show first the documents containing both words, close together, and near the top of the document.
Mona Lisa -- Finds documents that have either Mona or Lisa but not any other capitalized variation. When you use a capitalized word, AltaVista assumes that you are only interested in an exact match.
+mona +lisa -- Finds only documents that contain both words. Be sure there is no space between the plus sign and the word.
+mona lisa -- All documents found must contain mona or any capitalized variant. Documents that contain lisa are ranked higher in the list than documents that do not contain lisa.
"Mona Lisa" -- Finds documents that have the two words capitalized and found right next to each other. Placing quotation marks around any series of words turns them into a phrase and tells AltaVista that you are only interested in documents that have the words in this specific order.
+"Mona Lisa" –Louvre -- Finds documents that contain the phrase "Mona Lisa" but do not contain the word "Louvre". Try recipe cookie +chocolate - chips to find recipes for chocolate cookies without chips.
+ Mona +Lis* -- Finds documents that contain Mona and any word starting with Lis. Use an asterisk when you're not sure how a word is spelled or to find variations of the word: Try big* to find bigger, biggest, bigwig. Enter bicycle* to find singular and plural forms. Use an asterisk at the end or in the middle of words. AltaVista ignores an asterisk at the beginning of a word.
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AND -- Finds documents containing all of the specified words or phrases. Peanut AND butter finds documents with both the word peanut and the word butter.
OR -- Finds documents containing at least one of the specified words or phrases. Peanut OR butter finds documents containing either peanut or butter. The found documents could contain both items, but not necessarily.
AND NOT -- Excludes documents containing the specified word or phrase. Peanut AND NOT butter finds documents with peanut but not containing butter. NOT must be used with another operator, like AND. AltaVista does not accept 'peanut NOT butter'; instead, specify peanut AND NOT butter.
NEAR -- Finds documents containing both specified words or phrases within 10 words of each other. Peanut NEAR butter would find documents with peanut butter, but probably not any other kind of butter.
( ) -- Use parentheses to group complex Boolean phrases. For example, (peanut AND butter) AND (jelly OR jam) finds documents with the words 'peanut butter and jelly' or 'peanut butter and jam' or both.
anchor:text -- Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the text of a hyperlink. Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the text of a hyperlink. anchor:job +programming would find pages with job in a link and with the word programming in the content of the page. Do not put a space before or after the colon. You must repeat the keyword to search for more than one word or phrase; for example, anchor:job OR anchor:career to find pages with anchors containing either the word job or the word career.
applet:class -- Finds pages that contain a specified Java applet. Use applet:morph to find pages using applets called morph.
domain:domainname -- Finds pages within the specified domain. Use domain:uk to find pages from the United Kingdom, or use domain:com to find pages from commercial sites.
host:hostname -- Finds pages on a specific computer. The search host:www.shopping.com would find pages on the Shopping.com computer, and host:dilbert.unitedmedia.com would find pages on the computer called dilbert at unitedmedia.com.
image:filename -- Finds pages with images having a specific filename. Use image:beaches to find pages with images called beaches.
like:URLtext -- Finds pages similar to or related to the specified URL. For example, like:www.abebooks.com finds Web sites that sell used and rare books, similar to the www.abebooks site. like:sfpl.lib.ca.us/ finds public and university library sites. like:http://www.indiaxs.com/ finds sites about culture on the Indian subcontinent.
link:URLtext -- Finds pages with a link to a page with the specified URL text. Use link:www.myway.com to find all pages linking to myway.com.
text:text -- Finds pages that contain the specified text in any part of the page other than an image tag, link, or URL. The search text:graduation would find all pages with the term graduation in them.
title:text -- Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the page title (which appears in the title bar of most browsers). The search title:sunset would find pages with sunset in the title.
url:text -- Finds pages with a specific word or phrase in the URL. Use url:garden to find all pages on all servers that have the word garden anywhere in the host name, path, or filename.
NOTE: Search Tips were excerpted from
AltaVista Search Cheat Sheet http://doc.altavista.com/help/search/search_cheat.html
AltaVista Advanced Search Cheat Sheet http://doc.altavista.com/adv_search/syntax.html