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Summary of Boolean Operators for Alta Vista

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Summary of Boolean operators for Alta Vista

Are you tired of getting 30,000 pages from your search query? Try restricting your search with some of these delimiters. The more specific your query is, the more relevant your results will be.

Capital Letters

Lower case searches will find words with capital letters.
  • "chronical" will find chronical, Chronical, and CHRONICAL

An upper case letter will be respected.
  • Chronical will only find Chronical.
  • "XEROX" will only find XEROX

Phrases

  • To keep a string of words together, use a semicolon or quotes:
    • "body surfing"
    • body;surfing (Note: no spaces)

    Note: Without the string intact, you would get all pages with the word "body" and all the pages with the word "surfing". Only a small percentage of these would be about "body surfing."
  • Restrictions

    To add delimiters, use +
    • "body surfing" +California (body surfing only in California)
    • "exotic birds" +wildlife +refuge (exotic birds in wildlife refuges)

    To restrict a search, use -
    • body;surfing -California (body surfing anywhere except California)
    • "exotic birds" -retail* (exotic birds, but not commercial sales)

    Wildcards

    To search for any form of a word, use *
    • quilt* (will find quilt, quilts, quilting, quilted, quilter, etc.)
    • body;surf* (will find body surfers - body surfer - body surfing)

    Further Reading

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    Author: Roy Bowers