Site Search Tips and Hints:

The text search engine will display a weighted list of matching documents, with better matches shown first. Each list item is a link to a matching document; if the document has a title it will be shown, otherwise only the document's file name is displayed. A brief explanation of the query language is available, along with examples.

Query Language

The text search engine allows queries to be formed from arbitrary Boolean expressions containing the keywords AND, OR, and NOT, and grouped with parentheses. For example:

information retrieval

finds documents containing 'information' or 'retrieval'

information or retrieval

same as above

information and retrieval

finds documents containing both 'information' and 'retrieval'

information not retrieval

finds documents containing 'information' but not 'retrieval'

(information not retrieval) and WAIS

finds documents containing 'WAIS', plus 'information' but not 'retrieval'

web*

finds documents containing words starting with 'web'

Need to find something but don’t know the URL address? A search engine might be just what you need. A search engine is a Web tool that helps you find specific sites on the Internet.

All search engines work differently. Some store every word from each site in their databases. Excite and InfoSeek look for new and changed sites, and enter all the words of each site into their databases. When you type in a key word, these engines look up every site containing that word (full-text searches).

Others store site names and descriptions only, but may also include reviews or ratings. Most are connected with a directory of services which divide their sites into categories. They search for addresses containing the key word in their names or descriptions. Excite and Magellan provide reviews and ratings of the sites while Yahoo! lets people submit their own descriptions. Yahooligans! is a searchable, browsable index of the Internet designed for Web surfers ages 8 to 14. When you use WebCrawler, you are actually searching an index (updated daily) of the Web rather than the Web itself.