Alta Vista Simple Search Q-card

Open Alta Vista simple search form in separate frame or in separate window.
Please note that you will have to use a different syntax when using Alta Vista Advanced Search. Open Q-card for Alta Vista Advanced Search.

In March 2004 the AltaVista search engine was discontinued. The AltaVista site is now powered by the Yahoo! Search Engine. Some of the features listed below may not be working at the moment.

Links:	Alta Vista Simple Search
Home page	www.altavista.com
Will search in…	www Looksmart Directory Overture pay-per-click text ads
Default search	AND
Case sensitive	Yes Words and phrases in quotes are case-sensitive. Hence in order to search for uncommon spellings, enclose the word/term in double quotation marks: "eXtra" All lower-case matches everything. Items not in quotes are not case sensitive
Natural language queries	Yes
Spell check	English
Translates pages into another language	Yes cp. Babelfish.
SYNTAX	Alta Vista Simple Search
Find pages that have one or more of these words	dog OR cat
Find pages that contain all these words	+dog +cat (only in simple search) dog AND cat
Find pages that contain the first, but not the last, word	dog -cat (only in simple search) dog AND NOT cat
Find pages that contain the following exact phrase	"raining cats and dogs" Alta Vista has automatic phrase detection: a large set of commonly used phrases that will be interpreted as such even if you do not use " --" 1-800-555-1212 Dashes link numbers together as a phrase
Find pages that contain these words in near proximity of each other	dog NEAR cat (within 10 words of each other)
Find pages that contain words that start with the following letters (joker-signs, truncation, wildcards)	dog* finds "dog", "dogs", "doghouse" etc. (The stem must have at least three letters.)
Nesting (Use of parentheses)	(cats AND dogs) OR pets
FIELD SEARCH	Alta Vista Simple Search
Find pages that have the following http-address (or parts of address)	url:aviana or (if you are looking for a specific computer) host:aviana.com
Find pages under the following domain	domain:com (only top level domains or country letter code)
Find pages that contain images with names that contains the following word	image:lassie.gif
Find pages that contain links to the following address	link:www.aviana.com
Find pages that contain the following word in the title	title:dog
Find pages that contain the following text anywhere in the HTML-code	No
Find pages written in a particular language	Use advanced menu.
Find pages made in the following time period	Use advanced menu.
FIELD SEARCH USENET NEWSGROUPS	Alta Vista Simple Search
Find this newsgroup	No
Find this text in the subject field of newsgroup messages	No
Find messages that are written by the following	No
Find messages that are dated…	No
More information on simple searching	Alta Vista simple search Alta Vista FAQ for searchers UC Berkeley tutorial ResearchBuzz on Alta Vista Special Syntax

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