Search Engine Reviews: Yahoo and Northern Light + Boolean Basics: Using The NEAR Operator - Page 3
© Paula Dragutsky
In Alta Vista, employing the NEAR operator results in documents in which the search terms are within 10 words of each other. To use the NEAR operator, choose Advanced Search. Type your search words or phrase separated by NEAR. For example:
puppy NEAR training
In this case you'd get too many results. You can add another term to make your results more specific. For example:
puppy NEAR training NEAR chewing
Searching With NEAR In Lycos
In Lycos, you can require that search words appear near each other in two ways. One is by going to Advanced Search and using the NEAR operator. This will require that search words be no more than 25 words apart.
You can choose your own word number preference for the NEAR operator by using NEAR/ and then a number. For example if you wanted the words "puppy" and "training" to appear within 10 words of each other, you'd enter:
puppy NEAR/10 training
or to make your search more specific:
puppy NEAR/10 training NEAR/10 chewing
Another way of requiring that words be close together in Lycos is to click on the Pro Power Panel, which is below the Advanced Search box. For the menu choice appear close together, specify high under important. Then enter your search words in the Advanced Search box separated by spaces, for example:
puppy training chewing
The NEAR operator is generally considered a Boolean expression, although technically it's a proximity operator (ponderous terms for a simple concept). It's strength lies not just in what it does, but in how it can be combined with other Boolean operators. More about basic Boolean searching in my next article. . .
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