AltaVista

Provider: Digital Equipment Corporation
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also takes human submissions
Editorial function: No
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself
Notable features: Size of the index, speed of retrieval
FAQ: No, for the product. Yes, for the search engine, on the home page under "Help," for simple query mode; on the home page under "Advanced Query," and then "Help," for advanced query mode.

AltaVista indexes millions of Web pages as well as the text on those pages. It also provides access to thousands of Usenet newsgroups. Boolean AND/OR/NOT searching is supported, as well as phrase, proximity, truncation, and field searching. AltaVista provides feedback in order of relevance, but does not provide relevance scores. It has two detailed FAQs for searching that are essential to exploit the power of the system. It is an extremely powerful search tool, particularly for very specific searches. The Digital hardware that runs the system also provides very fast retrievals.


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