My plump starfish quickly lowered Lincoln's tie.

What does it all mean? You'll know when you've completed the exercise that follows. You can access the AltaVista simple search here, and there is a simple search help page that you should look over now, before we start. Bookmark both of them so that you can get back to them at any point. Print this page out and record the number of matches you find for each search so that when you review you can see the patterns of widening and narrowing your search.
Look for something like this and record the number of hits you get for each search.
Simple Search Practice Include and Exclude (+ and -)

My plump The first two basic tools to practice with the simple search are the use of + and - to include or exclude words. For example, if you wanted to find sites about backgammon tournaments, you'd type both words into the query box. However... this would find you sites that mentioned backgammon OR tournament. You want to find sites that use BOTH terms, so by putting a +before each term you force them to be included in all sites found. Note: There's no space between the + and the word, but there is a space between words. E.g.: +backgammon <space> +tournament Try it now, and record how many sites you find. Notice also that the ad at the bottom of the screen changes in response to your query. That's who's paying for this terrific service! Try another. Suppose you wanted to find sites about the lost continent of Atlantis, not the shuttle Atlantis and not the movie of the same name. Try each query listed to the right: As you do each search, take note of what kinds of things turn up. Notice that the more specific the terms you include and exclude, the more focused your search.

Query # Matches backgammon tournament ~500,000 +backgammon +tournament Query # Matches +Atlantis +Atlantis -shuttle +Atlantis -shuttle +continent +Atlantis -shuttle +continent -film -movie

Use the Wildcard (*)

Starfish A common mistake people make is to inadvertantly narrow their search too much by excluding variations on a word they're looking for. For example, if you typed in +mushrooms, you'd miss all those pages that just had the singular word mushroom on them. The * wildcard stands for any letter(s). The wildcard is also useful for catching other variations on a word such as different forms of a verb. In general, never search for the plural of a word. Use the wildcard and get both the singular and plural forms.

Query # Matches +mushrooms +mushroom* +surf* +surf* -surface*

Use "Quotes" to Look for a Phrase

Quickly If you type a sequence of words in as a query, AltaVista will look for documents that contain any of those words. If you want the words to hang together as a phrase, you should put double quotes around them. Try these: AltaVista recently added a phrase-guessing element to its algorithms. If you type a few words in, and those words are commonly found hanging together in its index, it will assume that you're searching for them as a phrase even if you don't put quotes around them. If you're looking for a phrase that is not common, though, you'll need the quotes.

Query # Matches +San Diego +"San Diego" merits of laziness "merits of laziness"

use lower case (usually)
Lowered AltaVista pays attention to any capital letters you type into a query. If you search for Octopus, it will only find documents in which it's spelled that way. In general, unless you're after a particular spelling, use all lower case. Try these:	Query # Matches +Octopus +octopus +WebQuest +webquest +webquest*

Use the link: Tag to Find Pages Linked to Another Page

Lincoln's Suppose you found the absolutely perfect page about Beanie Babies, and it's located at http://www.beaniebabes.com (note the spelling). It might be useful to look at other pages that were interested enough in Beanie Babies to have included a link to that page. If you put all or part of the URL of the page after "link:", you'll get a list of pages that are linked to the one you found useful. It's important that you don't capitalize "link:"

Query # Matches link:www.beaniebabes.com Link:www.beaniebabes.com link:edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquest.html Try these and see how many other pages are linked to the Beanie page and to the WebQuest Page. (In fact, as soon as Altavista indexes the page you're reading now, you should see it among the Beanie links as well. That normally takes a few weeks.)

Use the title: Tag to Focus Your Search
Tie A simple search will find a word anywhere on the web page. To locate pages that are primarily about one thing, look for pages that have that thing in their title. The result is much more tightly focused. Note: There can be a space between title: and the next word or not. It doesn't seem to matter. As with link:, don't capitalize title: Try these:	Query # Matches frog* title:frog* webquest title:webquest Title:webquest

So, to recap... remembering this sentence will help you to remember the seven techniques you just experimented with: My plump starfish quickly lowered Lincoln's tie. minus plus star quotes lower case link: title: -exclude +include wildcard* "phrases in quotes" case MATTERS find pages linked find words in the title If you can keep these seven words in mind, you'll be a much better searcher than you were a few minutes ago! And to add to your bag of tricks, you might also want to check out the Specialized Search Engines page. http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/staffdev/tpss99/searching/sevensteps.html Written by Bernie Dodge. Lincoln animation by Alex Dodge. Last updated July 8, 1999