New AltaVista and Google Search Tips from The Information Advisor

[Infoadvis2 at aol.com]

(Cross-posted: apologies for any duplication)

Greetings--Below is a summary and excerpt from the November issue of The 
Information Advisor, which examines changes in the AltaVista and Google 
search engines, and provides search tips for both . If there are questions or 
comments feel free to call or email me directly. The full article provides 
more details on the latest features of both of these search engines. (Other 
articles in the November 2000 issue include: a review of Online World 2000 
and descriptions of new research sources on the Web)

Robert Berkman
Editor
The Information Advisor
www.informationadvisor.com
Falmouth MA
508-540-5990
rberkman at aol.com

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A Few AltaVista Search Tips

Here are a few tips on improving your AltaVista searches:
 
· One area where AltaVista shines is in the quality of its help and tutorial 
pages. We recommend  printing out at least a portion of three of the most 
useful guides: the "search cheat sheet," the "advanced search cheat sheet" 
and the "advanced search tutorial." Keep these by your PC as a handy 
reference guide when searching AltaVista. 

· Although one might assume that an "advanced" Boolean search is superior to 
a non-Boolean one, AltaVista's Simple Search often retrieves more relevant 
results than the Advanced Search. Boolean operators override the relevance 
ranking algorithm that is employed in the simple search.

· Because Simple and Advanced Searches often retrieve different pages for the 
same search terms, it's a good idea to do the search in both modes if you 
want a more comprehensive search.

· Remember to use the NEAR operator and the title search field to narrow your 
search and eliminate less-relevant results.

· Be careful when using nested parentheses in Advanced Search. Although 
AltaVista supports nesting, using too many of them can often throw off the 
results.

Google Search Tips

Do you want to pinpoint a market research provider on a particular subject or 
country? One quick way to do this is to first link to Google's Web Directory 
listing for market research suppliers: 
directory.google.com/Top/Business/Marketing/Market_Research_Suppliers.  The 
initial list will display sites that provide market research services, 
reports and analyses, and are ranked by Google's link popularity technology.

But there are over 200 suppliers listed, which can make it hard to focus on 
just the specialty provider you need. You can then conduct a keyword search 
in just that category and obtain a more focused list still ranked by Google's 
ranking technology. For example, type in "fiber optics" and choose the option 
to "search only in market research suppliers," and you'll receive a focused 
list of 18 providers of fiber optics market research, ranked by keyword 
matches and number of incoming links.

Another tip: Bypass stop words inside quotation marks with the "plus" sign. 
Like most search engines, Google has some stop words that are so commonly 
found that the search engine doesn't bother searching on them. This can cause 
a problem if you want to search on a specific phrase that includes a stop 
word, such as "Land of Lakes."  If you type "Land of Lakes," you will be 
searching "Land AND Lakes," since Google will ignore "of" and use a default 
AND. Put inputting "land +of lakes" will retain that search as a phrase, and 
you will only receive hits on pages that include that specific phrase. 
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The Information Advisor, an international monthly journal founded in 1987, is 
a guide for information professionals, who rely on its articles to help them 
identify, compare and select the best business sources from the myriad of 
information products and services available, whether in print, on a 
professional database or on the Web.  Readers include business librarians, 
information brokers, market researchers, knowledge managers, competitive 
intelligence professionals and other hands-on researchers and information 
specialists. The Octobe issue  is available to non-subscribers for $20.  
Contact Ms. Sonia Bedikian at (212) 633-4539 for sbedikian at findsvp.com for 
further details.

The Information Advisor is published by FIND/SVP, Inc. (FSVP-NASDAQ), the 
global business advisory, research and consulting firm ( www.findsvp.com.)