Typical Search: maybeword +yesword -"no phrase"
Default Operator: AND (it used to be OR)
Boolean: (details) AND or + or &, AND NOT or - or !, OR or |, NEAR or ~," " (autophrase), *, nesting ( ). +- only in simple search.
Case Sensitivity: Not in simple search unless enclosed in quotes. Yes in advanced if there are any uppercase letters.
Word Stemming: no
Stop Words: few stopwords are used
Special Keywords: (details) anchor: applet: domain: host: image: like: link: text: title: url:
Index: large, but contains many dead links
Unique: BabelFish translation
Customize: preferences, filter
More:
AltaVista was once the top internet search engine, but it has now become somewhat outdated. It has good advanced search features and syntax, and also has other searches including images, music, and news, and video. In the advanced search (like this page) there is a "boolean query" box and a "sort by" box. Pages which contain the words you enter in the "sort by" box will rank higher in the results. AltaVista has a large database of phrases, and may search for terms as a phrase (eg baseball bat) even if you do not put quotation marks around it. AltaVista now includes some invisible web results at the top of results pages (see details). For a fee, anyone can have their website's listings accompanied with a logo, a few links, and other small items.

This page was last updated on March 8, 2002. Submit changes here.