Web Search Engines "Made Simple" -Reply

[Barbara Stewart]

On Fri, 7 Nov 1997, Karen Harker wrote:

> page I visited at the end of the day.  When I got to the 500th result and hit
> the 'next' button, the same 490-500 were displayed.  I could go no
> further.  I tried the search a couple of times, but still could go no further
> than 500.  
> 
> Is this common with all search engines?  Is there a trick around it?  


Yes, there's a trick around it, at least in Alta Vista (which only
displays 200 hits, many of them duplicated). When I approach the end of
the first 200 hits, or see that there is maximum duplication, I usually
take a section of the URL in the duplicated messages and add a minus sign,
and redo the search. Say cornell is in the URL for a search on "technical
services". I would repeat the search like this:

+"technical services" -cornell

I think about 5 or 6 minuses can be used per search.


Barbara Stewart
Latin American Cataloger, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003   (413) 545-2728
stew at library.umass.edu
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