Comments about Search Engines

Hotbot

Hotbot uses a fill-in-the-blank style form for both simple and advanced searching. Sequencing is permitted using parentheses (). Hotbot is sensitive to interesting case, and phrase searching may be performed using

quotation marks "…".
Symbols recognized:
and = &, + or = not = - adjacent = ;, !

Special features: Search for terms next to each other using ";": e.g.) blue;moon.
Limiting: Special features:* after:[day]/[month]/[year] to search for items entered/indexed after a certain date before:[day]/[month]/[year] to search for items entered/modified before a certain date domain:[domainname]restricts search to a specific domai depth:[number] restricts the depth of pages that will be retrieved form any one site newsgroup:[fullnewsgroupname] restricts the search to that newsgroup's postings

* More information on specific limiting.(external link)
Ranking: Ranks terms used in document titles more highly. Also uses frequency based on the number of occurrences and the length of the document.
Domains searched: WEB
search Hotbot

AltaVista

If no other specification is made, AltaVista automatically performs a search for two terms as an OR. It is case sensitive and sensitive to interesting case, and phrase searching using quotation marks is allowed. Sequencing using parentheses is also permitted.
Symbols recognized: and = +, (advanced only) AND, &, + not = -, (advanced only) AND NOT, ! or (advanced only) = OR, near (advanced only) = NEAR, ~
Truncation:
Both internal and concluding truncation are permitted. The * is used, and takes the place of up to five characters within or at the end of a word.

Limiting: Special features: link:[no space] retrieves links containing the word searched text:[no space] retrieves documents in which the word searched appears image:[no space]filename will locate image files in which the word appear anchor:[no space] will find pages with internal links containing the term host:[no space]nameofhost will locate pages on a specific host computer domain:[no space]domainname locates pages within the specified domain applet:[no space]class will find pages that contain the specified Java applet

Ranking: According to how many times the terms searched appear in the document.
Domains searched: WEB, Usenet

Google

Truncation is not permitted. Terms are searched exactly as they are typed, and when two or more terms are entered pages where the terms appear in close proximity are given precedence .
Phrase Searching
Phrase searching using quotation marks is recognized.
Symbols recognized:
not = - OR is not recognized.
Ranking
Results are ranked, and appear in order according to the number of highly rated pages which have linked to the page in question, and which best match the terms searched. The pages judged to be the "best" according to these criteria are returned at the top of the list.
Linked to:
Click on the bar graph to the left of any individual result to see what pages have linked to the result.
"I feel lucky"
The "I feel lucky" button automatically takes you to the first web page returned for your query.
Domains searched: Web
search Google