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Search Engine Reviews: Alta Vista and Four11 + Boolean Basics: The NOT (or AND NOT) Operator

© Paula Dragutsky

IF IT'S NOT ON ALTA VISTA, IT'S (PROBABLY) NOT ON THE INTERNET

Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.digital.com) is simply the most comprehensive search engine on the Internet. Unlike the majority of other search engines, it indexes every word of every Web page it visits. And it visits about 100 million Web pages, approximately twice as many as most of its competitors. You'll come up with far fewer "no results" in Alta Vista than in other search engines.

On the other hand - perhaps because of Alta Vista's hugeness and the vagaries of its search algorithm - some types of information about uncomplicated subjects, which can easily be found using other search engines, may be difficult to pin down using Alta Vista. For example, if you want to quickly locate the homepage of a large company, or if you're looking for general sites about a common topic, you're usually better off starting in another search engine. (Editor's note: See update below.)

Search Speed

To search at an acceptable rate of speed if you don't have the most current version of your favorite Web browser, you may find it necessary to choose the text only option at the bottom of Alta Vista's search page.

Until recently - when I upgraded from Explorer 3.2 to 4.0 - my screen would freeze for close to a minute while Alta Vista searched, or even when it fetched a second group of results. I didn't have this problem with any of the other search engines. In the text only mode, searches were fairly speedy.

Searching Alta Vista

It's best to start every search in the Simple Search mode. Using phrases instead of separate search words will improve your results in many cases. For example, instead of entering shoe and industry as separate subject words, enter "shoe industry".

Because Alta Vista indexes so many web pages, you're more likely to find items with your search word or phrase in their titles. To search only the titles of documents, enter title: followed by your keyword or phrase. For example, title:"shoe industry". Some of the many other ways you can restrict a search in Alta Vista are by words in URL's and by titles of images on a page.

How To Narrow Your Search

If you're having trouble narrowing a search, you can choose the refine option. You'll be presented with a list of categories related to your subject. For example, two of the categories for refining a search about the shoe industry were shoes (sandals, boots, etc.) and factories (workers, labor, etc). Choose the categories that interest you, and Alta Vista will search your subject words in relation to these categories. I've had mixed results using the refine option.