| Fields | |
| If you want to search by... | Choose... |
| Date last modified | AltaVista (Advanced Search) | Hotbot | HotBot SuperSearch | Northern Light Power Search |
| Domain/Site/URL | AltaVista | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Infoseek | Lycos Pro | Lycos Search Features | Northern Light | Northern Light Power Search | WebSitez |
| Geographic location | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | MetaCrawler Power Search | Northern Light Power Search |
| Images | AltaVista | AltaVista Photo Finder | AMICO Thumbnail Catalog | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Lycos Pro | Mamma | Savvy Search |
| Language | AltaVista | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Lycos Pro | Northern Light Power Search |
| Media type | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch |
| Programming Language | HotBot SuperSearch |
| Proper name | AltaVista | Excite | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Infoseek | Yahoo! (Search Options) |
| Sounds | Lycos Pro | Mamma |
| Title | AltaVista | HotBot | Infoseek | Lycos Pro | Lycos Search Features | Mamma | Northern Light | Northern Light Power Search |
| Search logic | |
| If you want to use... | Choose... |
| Boolean operators | AltaVista (Advanced Search) | Dogpile | Excite | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Lycos Pro | NetFind | Northern Light | WebCrawler |
| Full Boolean logic with parentheses
e.g., behavior and (cats or felines) |
AltaVista (Advanced Search) | Cyber411 | Excite | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Lycos Pro | Northern Light | WebCrawler |
| Implied Boolean +/- | AltaVista | Excite | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Infoseek | Lycos | Lycos Pro | Mamma | MetaCrawler | NetFind | Northern Light | PlanetSearch | WebCrawler |
| Boolean logic by template terminology | Excite (Power Search) | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | HuskySearch | Infoseek Advanced Search | Lycos Pro | SavvySearch |
| Proximity searching | AltaVista (Advanced Search) | Cyber411 | Dogpile | Lycos Pro |
| Search options | |
| If you want... | Choose... |
| A user fill-in template | Excite (Power Search) | HotBot | Infoseek Advanced Search | Lycos Pro |
| Case sensitivity | AltaVista | Infoseek |
| Truncation | AltaVista | Lycos | Northern Light | Northern Light Power Search |
| Automatic truncation | Excite | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Infoseek | Lycos | Northern Light | Northern Light Power Search |
| Concept searching applied to your search | Excite | Infoseek |
| Your search stated in plain English | Ask Jeeves |
| Translation of pages retrieved as search results, or any text, to and from selected languages | AltaVista | Babelfish (text & page translator) |
| An exact phrase within double quotations | AltaVista | Ask Jeeves | Alta Vista (Advanced Search) | Cyber411 | Dogpile | Excite | Excite (Power Search) | Infoseek | NetFind | WebCrawler | Yahoo! |
| Most phrases within double quotations (i.e., phrases with stop words must have other words in the phrase) | Lycos |
| An exact phrase from a template choice | Excite (Power Search) | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Infoseek Advanced Search | Yahoo! (Search Options) |
| Most phrases from a template choice (i.e., phrases with stop words must have other words in the phrase) | Lycos Pro |
| Search Results | |
| If you want... | Choose... |
| Results grouped by concept and/or type of site | Inference Find | MetaFind | Northern Light |
| Results as a series of questions to help locate the relevant site(s) | Ask Jeeves |
| Clustering of results into one hit per site with the option to see all | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Infoseek | Infoseek Advanced Search |
| Searching within existing results | AltaVista Refine | Excite | HotBot | HotBot SuperSearch | Infoseek | Infoseek Advanced Search | Lycos |
| Results similar to documents in existing results | Excite Search for more documents... | Planet Search Find Similar |
| Control over factors in relevancy ranking | Lycos Pro (HTML version) | Lycos Pro (Java version) |
| Alternative search terms | AltaVista Refine | Excite |
| Queries stored at the site and notification of new results | Planet Search Search Alert | Profusion Personal Assistant |
| Fast search processing | Infoseek |
| Database Quality, Size, and Type | |
| If you want to search... | Choose... |
| A large database, e.g., 110+ million files | AltaVista | HotBot |
| A frequently updated database | Excite | Infoseek | Lycos |
| Multiple search engines simultaneously with duplicate records removed | Cyber 411 | Inference Find | MetaCrawler | MetaFind | ProFusion | Savvy Search |
| Usenet newsgroups | AltaVista | Deja News | HotBot | Infoseek | Mamma | MetaCrawler | ProFusion |
| A topic-based database | The Internet Sleuth | Search.Com |
| A small but evaluated subject directory | Argus Clearinghouse | BUBL Link | INFOMINE | Librarians' Index to the Internet | Lycos Top 5% | Magellan | Scout Report Signpost | WWW Virtual Library |
| A large but unevaluated subject directory | Yahoo! |
Laura Cohen | Updated: 8 October 1998
lcohen@cnsvax.albany.edu