>From Bob Rankin
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: The Best of TOURBUS - : Advanced Searching
Sender The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace
<TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
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TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: BEST OF TOURBUS - Advanced
Searching
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP: http://www.altavista.digital.com
Alta Vista has for a long time been my favorite search engine.
It's the biggest and the baddest, in terms of both size and power.
And in today's Best of Tourbus issue, you'll learn some advanced
search techniques that'll help you find what you seek.
Alta Vista boasts the largest web database, with over 100 million
pages, and since they index 10 million pages per day, it's likely
the freshest as well. But because they catalog every word on every
web page, the dreaded "25,679 documents match your query" problem is
likely to pop up if you don't specify your search carefully.
True enough, it can be a brute force tool - but if you know how to
tame it using the advanced features, you can avoid the "drink from
a firehose" syndrome that often results from an Alta Vista query.
ADVANCED SEARCHING WITH ALTA VISTA
----------------------------------
Here's a little tip for you: Don't bother clicking the "Advanced
Search" button at Alta Vista. You can do some really amazing things
with leaving the AV home page. In fact, even the people who develop
AV use "simple search" almost exclusively! Here are some tips for
fine tuning your AV searches:
1) Use the "+" and "-" operators
Prefix your search words with "+" to indicate that they MUST occur
in a page to be considered a hit, and use "-" to exclude pages.
For example:
+chocolate +turtles
will find only pages that contain BOTH words. If you omit the
"+"
AV will return some pages about chocolate, some about turtles, in
addition to pages containing both words. In this example, the
difference is 25414 vs. 2467 matches. By adding an exclusion term
as shown below, the number of hits drops to 1869.
+chocolate +turtles -peanut
2) Use quotes for phrases
Well, 1800 matches is still a bit much to digest, so let's turn up
the heat at AV. If you really want to find Chocolate Turtles (and
not just pages with those two words) put it in quotes. The search
+"chocolate turtles" -peanut
yields only 49 hits! Now we're down to the level where you can
check out each matching document without spending hours.
3) Use the "host" and "domain" keywords
Have you ever wanted to look for a specific word at just one website?
Try a search like this:
+"chocolate" +host:ama-assn.org
This tells AV to find articles about chocolate published only by the
American Medical Association, and it yields just nine hits. You can
also exclude a website or an entire domain from a search:
+"tax reform" -host:whitehouse.gov
+"human rights" -domain:cn
The first example excludes documents published by one website, (the
US Whitehouse) and the second eliminates all documents from an
entire domain (the country of China).
4) Use the "title" keyword
If you're looking for pages on a specific topic, instead of pages
that just contain certain words, try limiting your search like so:
title:"chocolate addiction"
This often helps to weed out unwanted hits. The fact that someone
bothered to categorize their page with a <TITLE> keyword should
help you get better quality matching documents.
5) Use the "image" keyword
Looking for a special photo or icon? Try something like this:
image:truffle.gif
+image:comet* +host:nasa.gov
The first should be obvious, the second uses a wildcard to find
any image whose name starts with "comet", whether GIF or JPEG,
but only on the NASA website.
5) Use the "link" and "url" keyword
The "link" keyword finds pages that contain a link to another page,
and the "url" keyword finds pages with specific characters in the
address. Here are some examples:
link:tourbus.com
- find pages linked to the TOURBUS site
url:elvis
- find pages with
"elvis" in the address
By combining any of these search terms, your Alta Vista search
efficiency can go way up. And I haven't even covered all the special
keywords you can use to hone in on the object of your desiring. If
you want to learn more about advanced Alta Vista searching, visit
http://www.altavista.digital.com/av/content/help.htm
See you next time! --Bob Rankin
=====================[ Tourbus Rider Information ]===================
The Internet Tourbus - U.S. Library of Congress ISSN #1094-2238
Copyright 1995-98, Rankin & Crispen - All rights
reserved
Archives on the Web at
http://www.TOURBUS.com
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Send this copy to 3 friends and tell them to hop on the Bus!
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>From Bob Rankin
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: The Best of TOURBUS - Fun With E-Mail!
1. REMINDERS BY E-MAIL
Are you constantly in the dog house because you keep forgetting your
anniversary? If you need a little help remembering important events,
try the E-minder service. Tell it about your important meetings,
birthdays, anniversaries, and when the date of your event approaches,
you will receive an automatically generated electronic mail message as
a reminder. You can specify how early you would like to get the
reminder message, and you can register as many reminders as you like.
For directions on setting e-minder appointments by e-mail, send a
message like this:
TO:
e-minder@netmind.com
SUBJECT: e-minder help
BODY:
2. BIBLE SEARCH
Can e-mail reveal the meaning of life? Search the King James version
of the Bible vicariously and find out. Substitute your own search
words in the examples below, and shed a little light on your inbox.
Use a "+" sign to specify multiple words, prefix proper names with
"%23", and add "&PHRASE=ON" to find a phrase (consecutive words)
in
the KJV text.
TO:
getweb@unganisha.idrc.ca
SUBJECT:
BODY:
send
http://estragon.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/KJV?title=&word=angel+%23Mary
send
http://estragon.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/KJV?title=&word=fig+tree&PHRASE=O
N
3. SEND A FAX BY E-MAIL
Free faxing by e-mail? You bet. Get a copy of this helpful document
which shows how to send free faxes all over the world using e-mail.
For details, send e-mail as follows:
4. CURRENCY CONVERSION
If you've got a yen to know how many rupees are in a ruble, this one's
for you. You can get foreign exchange rates for the U.S. dollar and
other currencies by sending one (or both) of the lines shown below to
a webmail server.
TO:
getweb@unganisha.idrc.ca
SUBJECT:
BODY: send
http://cnnfn.com/markets/currencies.html
send
http://www.dna.lth.se/cgi-bin/kurt/rates/rates?USD+ALL
5. TRACK UPS PACKAGES
You can track your UPS packages now thru e-mail. Send an e-mail to
the address below and in the subject or the body place the complete
UPS tracking number.
TO:
totaltrack@ups.com
SUBJECT: tracking#
BODY:
LOTS MORE E-MAIL TRICKS
-----------------------
If you don't have direct access to the Net, you can still explore the
wonders of the Web. Get my free guide "Accessing The Internet By
E-Mail" and learn how to access almost anything on the Net even if you
have only e-mail at your disposal. The "Accessing" guide is available
in over 30 languages. To get the latest edition (and a list of
translations) send e-mail like this:
TO: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu
BODY: send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email
=====================[ Tourbus Rider Information ]===================
The Internet Tourbus - U.S. Library of Congress ISSN #1094-2238
Copyright 1995-98, Rankin & Crispen - All rights
reserved
Archives on the Web at
http://www.TOURBUS.com
Join: Send SUBSCRIBE TOURBUS Your Name to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Leave: Send SIGNOFF TOURBUS to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Send this copy to 3 friends and tell them to hop on the Bus!
=====================================================================
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