Quick Reference Guide to Search Engine Syntax

[HotBot] [Infoseek] [Lycos] [Magellan] 

[MetaCrawler] [Northern Light] [Yahoo!] 

• Keyword search defaulting to Boolean OR 
• Implied Boolean logic: + for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 

• Full case sensitivity supported 

• Page retrieval by language 
• Supported fields: 
• Anchor, e.g., anchor:White-House 
• Applet, e.g., applet:NervousText 
• Domain, e.g., domain:nz 
• Host, e.g., host:ibm.com 
• Image, e.g., image:clinton.jpg 
• Link, e.g., link:www.albany.edu/library/ 
• Text, e.g., text:fungicide 
• Title, e.g., title:"New York Times" 
• URL, e.g., url:holocaust 

• Phrases within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle" 

• Mandatory truncation 
• Truncation character: * 
• Internal truncation supported, e.g., colo*r 

• Boolean AND, OR, AND NOT, NEAR [terms within 10 words of each other] with parentheses. e.g., behavior and (cats or felines) 

• Date 

• Keyword search defaulting to Boolean AND unless one of the terms is truncated, in which case the default is OR 
• Full Boolean logic: Boolean OR, AND with parentheses, e.g., behavior and (cats or felines) 
• NOT operator is not supported 

• None 

• None 

• None 

• Mandatory truncation 
• Truncation character: * 

• Keyword search defaulting to Boolean OR 
• Implied Boolean logic: + for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 
• Full Boolean logic: Boolean AND, OR, AND NOT with parentheses, e.g., behavior AND (cats OR felines). Boolean operators must be in CAPS. 

• None 

• None 

• Phrases within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle" 

• None 

• With list of hits, option to add displayed related terms to the original search; terms will be added with OR logic 
• Once list of hits is returned, option to View by Web Site (URL) 

• Boolean logic via template terminology: 
• My search results CAN contain the words, the name or phrase (Boolean OR) 
• My search results MUST contain the words, the name or phrase (Boolean AND) 
• My search results MUST NOT contain the words, the name or phrase (Boolean NOT) 
• Option to add more constraints as above 

• None 

• None 

• Phrases within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle" 

• None 

• Boolean logic via template terminology: 
• all the words (Boolean AND) 
• any of the words (Boolean OR) 
• the person (proximity of terms) 
• Boolean phrase 
• Boolean phrase option supports AND, OR, NOT, AND NOT, and must be entered in CAPS. Boolean searches with parentheses are supported with this option, i,e., behavior AND (cats OR felines). 
• Implied Boolean logic: + for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 

• Limited support within words, e.g., neXT 

• the page title 
• links to this URL 
• Date, i.e., last modified date 
• Language 
• Meta Words offer manual input off search restrictions such as media type and date. For more information, see Advanced Help file at http://help.hotbot.com/faq/advanced.html 

• Exact phrase 
• Phrases within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle." This is useful for multi-term searches using the option all the words or any of the words. 

• No truncation symbol; engine stems each term 

• Added windows for subject searching; click on + icon to add more windows (2 may be added for a maximum of 4) 

• Date 
• Language 
• Location by domain or continent 
• Page type 
• File/program types including 
• Java 
• JavaScript 
• ActiveX 
• VRML 
• Acrobat 
• VB Script 
• File Extension 

• Keyword search defaulting to Boolean OR 
• Implied Boolean logic: + for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 

• Full case sensitivity supported 

• Supported fields: 
• Title, e.g., title:"New York Times"
• ULR, e.g., url:holocaust
• Site, e.g., site:ibm.com
• Link e.g., link:www.albany.edu/library 

• Phrase search in one of two ways: 
• Place phrase within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle" 
• Insert hyphen between each word, e.g., budget-battle 

• No truncation symbol; engine stems each term 

• Separate a search of proper names with a comma 

Bill Clinton, Bob Dole

• Use a pipe (|) to limit search results from within a retrieved set 

dogs | poodles 

• Boolean logic via template terminology (up to three levels) 
• must (Boolean AND) 
• should (Boolean OR) 
• should not Boolean NOT) 

• Full case sensitivity supported 

• Document 
• Title 
• URL 
• Hyperlink 
• Search by location (top level domain) 

• Phrase 

• No truncation symbol; engine stems each term 

• Keyword search defaulting to Boolean AND 
• Implied Boolean logic: + for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 

• None 

• Choose Search Features to search 
• Title 
• URL 
• Site 

• Phrases within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle" 
• Phrases with stop words are searchable if other words also appear in the phrase 

• Truncation is optional; search engine stems search terms 
• Place a period (.) after the term to prevent truncation 
• Optional truncation character: $ 

• No searching a word that starts with a number, e.g., 11th 

• Boolean logic via template terminology: 
• Any of the words (Boolean OR) 
• All the words (Boolean AND) 
• All the words (Good match) 
• All the words (Near match) 
• All the words (Close match) 
• All the words (Strong match) 
• The last 4 items above refer to relative proximity
• Implied Boolean logic: +/- for Boolean AND, NOT 
• Full Boolean logic: AND, OR, NOT with parentheses, e.g., behavior and (cats or felines) 
• Several proximity options: 
• NEAR (within 25 words); NEAR/n 
• ONEAR (within 25 words in exact query order); ONEAR/n 
• FAR (at least 25 words apart), or FAR/n 
• OFAR (at least 25 words apart in exact query order); OFAR/n 
• ADJ (words next to each other); ADJ/n 
• OADJ (words next to each other in exact query order); OADJ/n 
• BEFORE (first query word appears in document before second query word) 
• n represents a user-specified number

• None 

• None 

• The Exact Phrase 
• Phrases within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle" 
• Phrases with stop words are searchable if other words also appear in the phrase 

• Truncation is optional; search engine stems search terms 
• Place a period (.) after the term to prevent truncation 
• Optional truncation character: $ 

• Natural Language Query 
• Relevancy ranking: Click on Power Panel (HTML and Java versions) to specify the relevancy ranking factors in terms of: 
• Match every word 
• Frequency of words 
• Appear early in text 
• Appear in title 
• Appear close together 
• Appear in exact order 

• Keyword search defaulting to Boolean OR 
• Implied Boolean logic:+ for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 
• Full Boolean logic: Boolean AND, OR, AND NOT with parentheses, e.g., behavior AND (cats OR felines). Boolean operators must be in CAPS. 

• None 

• None 

• Phrases within double quotations, i.e., "budget battle" 

• None 

• Template terminology: any (Boolean OR), all (Boolean AND), as a phrase 
• Implied Boolean logic: + for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 

• None 

• None 

• Phrases within double quotations, i.e., "budget battle," to use with a search for any or all 
• Exact phrases may not be searchable since some queried search engines ignore stop words 

• None 

• Location (top level domain) 

• Keyword searching defaulting to Boolean AND 
• Boolean AND, OR, NOT 
• Implied Boolean logic: + for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 

• None 

• URL, e.g., URL:whitehouse 
• Title, e.g., title:"White House" 
• Pub (searches certain Special Collections journals), e.g., pub:Billboard 
• Company (searches certain Special Collections journals), e.g., company:ibm 
• Ticker, e.g., ticker:ibm 
• Text, e.g., text:"White House" 

• Phrases within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle" 

• Automatic for common singular and plural word forms 
• * truncation character replaces multiple characters if the word contains at least four characters, e.g., librar* will retrieve library, libraries, librarian, librarians, librarianship, etc. 
• % truncation character replaces a single character, e.g., colo%r 

• Words anywhere (searches full text) 
• Words in title 
• Words in URL 
• Country 
• Date 
• Language (French, German, Italian, Spanish) 

• Limits results to various sources, topics and document types 

• Keyword search defaulting to Boolean AND 
• Implied Boolean logic: + for Boolean AND, - for Boolean NOT 

• None 

• Title, e.g., t:automobiles 
• URL, e.g., u:ibm 

• Phrases within double quotations, e.g., "budget battle" 

• Mandatory truncation 
• Truncation character: * 

• Matches on all words (AND) 
• Matches on any word (OR) 
• A person's name 

• None 

• Date 

• An exact phrase match 

• Intelligent default (explanation not provided)