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AltaVista has been the premier large search engine for years. Today it has three competitors: Google, FAST/AllTheWeb , and Northern Light. Using large databases is important in finding obscure information, as a database cannot find what it hasn’t indexed. The Web now has over 1 billion pages, but the largest search engine only indexes a fraction of this. It is necessary to look in more than one search engine to do a thorough search.

Google (www.google.com) - This is the smallest and easiest to use of these search engines. Google is known for having good, well-organized retrieval results. Use quotation marks around phrases. This search engine assumes an automatic AND, so pages will be retrieved which include all words listed. Googlescout finds Web pages related to the one selected. It does not support Boolean searching or truncation. Boolean searching uses and to signify that both terms must be included, or to mean one or the other must be included, and not to mean the first term must be included and the second term must not be included.

FAST or All the Web (www.alltheweb.com) - This is currently (February 2000) the largest search engine. There are 300 million web pages indexed at FAST. The simple search can look for all of the words, any of the words, or the exact phrase. The advanced search can filter by domain (e.g. .com, noaa.gov, .jp (for Japan)) and language. The advanced search supports Boolean searching. Use the word filters Must include for and, Should include for or, and Should not include for not. FAST does not support truncation of words.

Northern Light (www.northernlight.com) - Northern Light searches the Web and a select list of journals, which you can download for a fee. NOAA Seattle Regional Library subscribes to most of the oceanographic and atmospheric related journals, and many are available free of charge through the NOAA Seattle Regional Library catalog. Northern Light organizes the results into folders, which you can navigate through to find the most relevant sites. The best way to search this site is with short phrases. The power search can limit the search by subject, type of site, language, country of origin, and date. This search engine uses AND as a default between words. This search engine supports Boolean searching, truncation (using the * symbol), wild cards (%), must (+) and must not (-) include, and exact phrases (“ ”). Truncation is used to find all words with a given stem, such as meteorolog* for meteorology and meteorologists. Wild cards are symbols used to substitute for a single letter. Northern Light automatically searches for plurals.

AltaVista (www.altavista.com) - The granddaddy of search engines, this is the most widely used of the large search engines. The best way to search this site is with short phrases. Alta Vista uses the same syntax as Northern Light, but it does not support the wild card. The default between words is OR. Alta Vista can search URL’s, titles, links, hosts, and images. It can limit by date and language. Boolean expressions are AND, OR, AND NOT, and NEAR. These are case sensitive.

Last Update: April 19, 2002