By Danny Sullivan, Editor
SearchEngineWatch.com
Page updated: Oct. 26, 2001
PLEASE NOTE: This page is still being updated for Netscape, The Open Directory and Yahoo -- though information about these services, where listed, may still be correct. These remaining services should be fully updated by mid-Jan. 2002.
The major search engines have many features meant to assist beginning searchers, and even professional researchers may find these aids helpful. This page summarizes and illustrates some of the major search assistance features that are available.
Select a topic below to jump to any section directly
Related Searches - Clustering - Find Similar - Stemming - Search Within
Spidered Version - Search By Language - Page Translation - Porn Filter
Customize Results - Sort By Date - Date Range - Date Display
Advanced Search Pages - Help Pages
Related Searches
A related searches feature is designed to help users narrow in on what they are looking for. For example, let's say you searched for "mars." When the results appeared, you might also be shown some related searches links, such as "mission to mars" or "life on mars." If you selected one of these links, a new search would be conducted, using the words you clicked on. This can help you be more specific in your query, which often leads to better results.
AltaVista
Displays related searches near the top of the results page, next to the words "Others searched for."
AllTheWeb.com
Displays related searches near the top of the results page, next to the words "Narrow your search."
Direct Hit
Displays related searches near the top of the results page, under the "Related Searches" heading.
Excite
After performing a search, click on the "Zoom In" button near the search box to see related terms. These will appear in a separate window. Select the related term you want and choose the Search button within the new window. Your search will then be sent to Excite.
HotBot
Displays related searches near the top of the results page, under the "People who did this search also searched for" heading.
iWon
iWon provides related searches functionality via its Direct Hit listings. See the Using Direct Hit Popularity Results for more about this.
MSN Search
Displays related searches in the "Popular Topics" area below the search box, on the results page.
Yahoo
At Yahoo, related searches appear at the bottom of its results page, just below the search box, as shown below:
Clustering
Have you ever done a search and found the top results all seem to come from one site? Clustering prevents this. Clustering generally allows only one or two pages per site to be represented in the top results. This means that you get more variety and a better chance of quickly finding something of interest. The section below highlights how this feature works at the major services that offer it.
AltaVista
AltaVista clusters listings so that no more than two pages per site appear in its results. If a second page from a particular web site is listed, it will be indented under the first page. To see more results from a site, select the "Additional relevant pages from this site" link, if it appears for a particular listing.
AllTheWeb.com
Clustering is on by default and will prevent more than two pages from the same web site from being displayed. It can be overridden by changing the Site Collapsing option on the Search Customization page (see the Customizing Results section below). You can also view more pages from any particular site listed by selecting the "more hits from" link that follows the listing.
Excite
There is no way to disable clustering at Excite. However, you can see more pages from any particular site listed by selecting the "more from this site" link that follows the listing.
Google clusters so that no more than two pages per site appear in its results. If a second page is listed, it will be "indented" under the first page. To see more results from a site, select the "More results from" link that will appear below the second page listed.
HotBot
At HotBot, clustering is on by default. However, it only works within the listings provided by Inktomi. To turn off clustering, go to the advanced search page, then in the "Best Page Only" section, check the "Disable Best Page Only Filter" box. You can also view more pages from any particular site listed by selecting the "See results from this site only" link that follows the listing.
iWon
Results are automatically clustered, and this cannot be turned off.
MSN Search
Clustering at MSN Search has to be enabled from its advanced search page. Look for the "Show one result per domain" option and select it to start clustering.
Northern Light
Northern Light has clustering, and there is no way to turn this off. To see more pages from a site, click on the "More Results" link below the page listing, if it appears.
Find Similar
Did you find a web page in the search results that seemed perfect -- it was exactly what you were looking for? A "Find Similar" feature tells the search engine to seek out other pages that seem similar to those you like. The section below highlights how this feature works at the major services that offer it.
AltaVista
Click on the "Related pages" link that appears at the bottom of each listing.
AOL Search
Click on the "Show me more like this" option that appears at the bottom of each page listed. This takes you to where that page is categorized within the version of the Open Directory that AOL users. That can help you find similar web sites.
AltaVista
Click on the "Similar pages" link that appears at the end of each listing.
Stemming
Stemming is the ability for a search engine to search for variations of a word based on its stem. For example, entering "swim" might also find "swims" and maybe "swimming," depending on the search engine.
The Search Features Chart shows which search engines will do stemming by default and those that allow it to be switched on as an option. Some search engine specific notes are also below.
Direct Hit
Singular and plural forms for words should generally provide the same results (cook versus cooks) and should other ending such as ing (cook versus cooking).
HotBot
Stemming should be on automatically for Direct Hit-powered listings (see Direct Hit, above). For stemming in Inktomi-powered listings, see the Inktomi section, below.
Inktomi
Inktomi-powered HotBot, (iWon, MSN Search) provide stemming as an option. To enable it, go to the advanced search pages of each search engine, then
At HotBot, check the "Enable Word Stemming" box.
At iWon, enable the "Use word stemming" box.
At MSN Search, see below.
MSN Search
This appears to be on permanently, at least for some queries. For example, a search for "run," "runs" and "running" in Oct. 2001 found the same results. Oddly, using the "Enable Stemming" box on MSN Search's advanced search page actually causes no results to appear.
Search Within
Ever do a search and still feel like you have too many results? Instead of trying a new search, you might have more luck narrowing down the set of matches you've already generated. Some search engines make this easy through a "Search Within" feature. The section below highlights how this feature works at the major services that offer it.
AltaVista
After performing a search, check the "Search within these results" box under the search box, on the results page.
After performing a search, click on the "Search within results" link that appears at the bottom of the results page, next to the search box, on the results page.
HotBot
After performing a search, check the "Search within these results" box that appears n, next to the search box, on the results page.
LookSmart
You cannot search within results generated from a keyword search on the LookSmart home page. However, if you navigate to any particular category, you can then search for matching sites that appear only within that category and its subcategories. To do this, when in a category, change the drop down box at the top of the category page from "the Web" to the second option, which will be the name of the category you are in.
Lycos
At Lycos, choose the "Search these results" option which appears next to the search box, at the top of the results page.
Yahoo
At Yahoo, you can't run a search and then search within it. But you can go to any category and then choose to search just within that section. Just look for the appropriate options near the search boxes that appear within the categories.
Spidered Version
It can be helpful to see the exact version of a web page that was presented to a search engine's spider. This is good for those times when a page no longer exists, allowing you to still find the information. It's also essential if you want to determine if a search engine spider was shown something different than what a human user sees. In fact, some webmasters may "pagejack" someone else's web page, feeding it to a search engine in hopes of attaining a good ranking. For more information about this, see the pagejacking section of the Search Engines and Legal Issues page.
Only Google allows you to see the actual page it spidered, through its "Cached" feature. When you search, a "Cached" link may appear below some pages that are listed. Click on this, and you'll be shown the page that was indexed, and any of your search terms will be highlighted.
You can also bring up the spidered version using Google's cache command. Simple enter the URL of a page after cache: and omitting the http:// prefix. For instance, to see the cached version of this page, you would enter this into Google:
cache:searchenginewatch.com/facts/assistance.html
Search By Language
Sometimes you may want to find pages written in a particular language. For example, you might want travel advice about Paris written in French. If you search for "paris," you'll probably get many pages written in English, since the city is spelled the same way in English and French. However, with a search by language option, you can specify that only pages written in French should be returned.
Searching by language isn't perfect. Search engines generally use dictionaries of terms specific to different languages to identify a page's language when spidering it. That means pages with content written in several different languages may not be categorized properly. Additionally, because this is an automated process, it can suffer from the mistakes that any automated system may have.
Below is how to search by language, at search engines that offer this feature.
AltaVista & AllTheWeb.com
Use the drop-down box that appears next to the search box on the home page and results page, to search in a particular language that's offered.
Excite, Google, Lycos
Use the advanced search page to search by language at these services.
HotBot
Use the drop-down box that appears on the left-hand side on the home page, to search in a particular language that's offered.
MSN Search
Use the "Language" drop-down box on the advanced search page to search by language through Inktomi's crawler-based results.
Northern Light
Use the "Documents written in: Language" drop-down box on the advanced search page.
Page Translation
Some search engines allow you to translate web pages they list into different languages. That's helpful if you see a page you are interested in but it is written in a language you don't understand. Below is how to do translation at search engines that offer this.
AltaVista & Lycos
Click on the "Translate" link that appears at the bottom of each listing.
Click on the "Translate this page" link that appears next to the title of pages that are not in English, when using the main Google.com web site.
Porn Filter
Some search engines allow you to filter out pages that may lead to pornographic web sites or sites with content that might be considered offensive to some people. They generally do this by scanning pages for pornographic terms at the time they are indexed. "Block" lists and human review is also conducted.
Porn filters are not perfect, but they can be especially helpful if you are working with children and want to minimize the risk of them seeing sexually explicit or offensive terms in the results that appear.
Some search engine specific notes are below:
AltaVista
Use this page to enable the porn filter:
AltaVista Family Filter Setup
http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/ffset
AllTheWeb
The porn filter is on by default. It can be overridden by changing the Offensive Content Reduction option on the Search Customization page (see the Customizing Results section below).
Enable the porn filter by using the SafeSearch option Google's customize page (see the Customizing Results section below).
LookSmart
LookSmart does not list porn sites. However, searches on porn turns will bring up listings from the Inktomi results that supplement LookSmart's own listings. Therefore, do not consider a search on LookSmart to be child-safe.
Lycos
Use this page to enable the porn filter:
Lycos SearchGuard
http://searchguard.lycos.com/
HotBot, MSN Search & Northern Light
These service will warn "You have entered a search term that is likely to return adult content" if you enter porn terms. That prevents you from immediately seeing possibly objectionable content. However, results are still offered, if you choose to go beyond this warning. These results come from across the web, from the service itself, or from a partner search engine that specializes in listing porn sites and content.
Customize Results
Wouldn't it be nice to see more than the 10 results at a time that are usually displayed at most search engines? Perhaps you might want to see just the titles of matching web pages. Some search engines allow you to customize your results in this way, usually via advanced search pages or from menu options. The Search Features Chart shows how many results are shown at each search engine by default and up to how many you can choose to see.
Below are links to special customization pages offered by some search engines:
AltaVista Customize Settings
http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pref=res&stype=stext&Translate=on&sc=on
AllTheWeb
http://www.alltheweb.com/customize
Google
http://www.google.com/help/customize.html
MSN Search
http://search.msn.com/Preference.asp
Sort By Date
Sort by date sounds like a great idea, but there are big problems with dates on the web. Some web servers report incorrect dates or no dates at all.
For instance, Go's engineers estimated in 1998 (back when the search engine still existed) that only 70 percent of web servers returned the correct date, while 20 percent reported the current date, regardless of when the page was created or changed. The remaining 10 percent of the time, the web servers reported no date at all.
Northern Light has also found similar problems, as outlined in the article below:
Northern Light Adds Search Functions, Freshens Index
The Search Engine Report, Aug. 4, 1998
Still, date sorting is a nice feature to have, and one that many professionals want. When you choose the option, they list pages with newer dates first.
At MSN Search, you'll find this option on the advanced search page. Use the "Sort equally relevant results by" box.
At Northern Light, you enable date sorting it by going to the advanced search page and checking the "Sort results by" option.
Keep in mind that often when people want to sort by date, they are often trying to get the latest information on a news topic. In these case, it is better to use a news search engine. See the News Search Engines page for a list of these helpful services.
Date Range
Some search engines let you restrict a search so that only pages within a particular date range are displayed. This feature can suffer from the fact that web page dates can be unreliable, as described above. However, it can also be useful, especially as a means of determining how fresh a search engine's listings are.
For example, if you restrict a search to find pages less than a month old and don't get any matches, you have a pretty good idea that the search engine's listings are out of date.
See the Search Features Chart for which search engines offer this option on their advanced search pages.
Date Display
Along with the page description, some search engines show the date when a web page was created or modified. As noted above, these dates may not always be reliable. However, they do provide a useful clue as to how fresh or stale a search engine's listings are. Thus, search engines that show a date deserve praise for doing so.
See the Search Features Chart for which search engines display a date. When no date is reported, these search engines above will instead display the date the page was spidered.
Northern Light is an exception. In these cases, it won't report a date at all.
Directories don't spider pages, but they can display when a listing was manually added or updated, if desired.
Advanced Search Page
Most of the search services have advanced search pages designed to let you have more control over your search, or to guide you into creating more complex queries. However, these are sometimes hard to find. To help, here are links that will take you directly to each service's advanced search pages:
AltaVista Search Assistant
http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/power
AltaVista also has another "advanced" page that should only be used if you want to perform Boolean queries. See the Boolean Searching page for more about this.
AllTheWeb.com Advanced Search
http://www.alltheweb.com/advanced
AOL Search Options Page
http://search.aol.com/refine.adp
Direct Hit Advanced Search
http://www.directhit.com/AdvancedSearch.asp
Excite Advanced Web Search
http://www.excite.com/search/advanced
Google
http://www.google.com/advanced_search
HotBot SuperSearch
--link too long to display--
Lycos
http://lycospro.lycos.com/
iWon Advanced Search
http://www.iwon.com/home/search/search_advanced/
MSN Search Advanced
http://search.msn.com/advanced.asp
Northern Light
http://www.northernlight.com/power.html
Yahoo Advanced Search Options
http://search.yahoo.com/search/options
Help Pages
Many services provide more information on advanced searching techniques and features within their help pages. The links below will take you directly to them:
AltaVista Help
http://help.altavista.com/
AllTheWeb.com Help
http://www.alltheweb.com/help/
AOL Search Help
http://search.aol.com/help/
Direct Hit Help
http://www.directhit.com/help/
Excite Search Help
http://www.excite.com/info/search_help/
Google Help
http://www.google.com/help/
HotBot Help
http://hotbot.lycos.com/help/
LookSmart
LookSmart does not provide help for those searching the directory. This is because LookSmart's site is primarily meant to serve the webmaster audience that wishes to list their site in the results that LookSmart distributes to its partners.
Lycos Search Help
http://help.lycos.com/LycosHelp/help/search/htdocs/search_1_help.htm
GoTo Search Tips
http://www.goto.com/d/about/howto/ht_search.jhtml
iWon Search Tips
http://www.iwon.com/home/search/search_tips/
MSN Help
http://help.msn.com/
Choose the MSN Search link to get search-specific help.
Northern Light Search Help
http://www.northernlight.com/docs/search_help_optimize.html
WebCrawler Help
http://webcrawler.com/Info/
Yahoo: Searching The Web With Yahoo
http://howto.yahoo.com/chapters/7/1.html
This is a long, narrative account of searching with Yahoo. For specific tips and commands, see also Yahoo Search Help.
More Resources
Search Engine Math
This teaches you the basic commands that are all most people need to improve their searches.
Power Searching For Anyone
This teaches you advanced commands to help you better control your searches.
Search Features Chart
Designed for searchers, an at-a-glance look at common commands and features.
Search Engine Tutorials
Links to articles and web sites that offer help with using search engines.
Search Engine Reviews
Links to reviews about the major search engines, in terms of how effective they are.
iWon
After you do a search, a "Most Popular" result section appears on the far right hand side of the results page. This provides access to Direct Hit listings. For any search, suggested topics will appear. Selecting a topic brings up web page listings for that subject from the Direct Hit index.
Lycos
Lycos uses Direct Hit information for some of the results in its "Popular" area, as circled below. You'll know if Direct Hit is being used because the text will say, "based on user selection traffic," also circled below. Additionally, the Direct Hit logo will appear at the bottom of the results page.
MSN Search
Direct Hit information is made available via a "Top 10" link that appears at the top of the Web Directory Sites section of results.
More Resources
Search Assistance Features
Several search engines offer special search assistance features that many users overlook. This page explains the ones that are particularly useful.
Direct Hit Partners
http://www.directhit.com/partners.html
This page lists all of Direct Hit's major partners, which include some services not shown above. The page also gives instructions on how to access Direct Hit results via these partners.
Direct Hit
http://www.directhit.com/
You can also access Direct Hit popularity results by searching from the company's own web site.