The AltaVista Search Revolution [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

During its time on the Web, the AltaVista search engine has undergone several revisions and continues to evolve. Though it faces competition from a number of worthy competitors, it's fair to say that AltaVista ranks as the most feature-rich general-purpose Web search tool. This book helps you get the most out of AltaVista's power, using tables and examples to show you how to get what you need.

The authors first explain how to do basic searches, then move on to more advanced searches with Boolean operators and AltaVista's special parameters. Chapters detail how to do such things as search Usenet newsgroups and how to translate hits into other languages. If, for instance, you want to limit a search to Australian pages, this guide details the procedure. A lengthy alphabetical chapter lists searches for particular targets and, in doing so, illustrates some unusual search strategies.

Those who publish their own Web sites will appreciate the chapter that reveals how AltaVista ranks the sites it indexes. Many of the engine's ranking algorithms are secret (and remain so), but many others are public and receive satisfactory coverage. An entertaining appendix lists the words most frequently used in Web pages (the is the big winner) and an Excite-like list of the most searched-for words (though apparently with the raunchiness edited out). --David Wall

This volume provides comprehensive coverage of the AltaVista search engine. AltaVista is an Internet-based search service from Digital that provides access to the largest Web index: 31 million pages found on 628,000 servers (1,158,000 hostnames), and four million articles from 14,000 Usenet newsgroups. Using Digital technologies, pages on the Web are searched, sorted by occurrence of key words, indexes and stored on Digital's server, so that when users enter a word - a term, name, concept, product - AltaVista queries its indexes and reports back everywhere the word or term looked for can be found at that moment. AltaVista is accessed 31 million times per weekday, and provides the searching power behind many of the leading search services, including Yahoo, CNET's Search.com, 100 Hot Websites, LookSmart, LawCrawler, PeekABoo, TechWeb and others. Eric and Deborah Ray are co-authors of "Dummies 101: HTML", "Approach 97 for Windows for Dummies" and "Netscape Composer for Dummies".

This volume provides comprehensive coverage of the AltaVista search engine. AltaVista is an Internet-based search service from Digital that provides access to the largest Web index: 31 million pages found on 628,000 servers (1,158,000 hostnames), and four million articles from 14,000 Usenet newsgroups. Using Digital technologies, pages on the Web are searched, sorted by occurrence of key words, indexes and stored on Digital's server, so that when users enter a word - a term, name, concept, product - AltaVista queries its indexes and reports back everywhere the word or term looked for can be found at that moment. AltaVista is accessed 31 million times per weekday, and provides the searching power behind many of the leading search services, including Yahoo, CNET's Search.com, 100 Hot Websites, LookSmart, LawCrawler, PeekABoo, TechWeb and others. Eric and Deborah Ray are co-authors of "Dummies 101: HTML", "Approach 97 for Windows for Dummies" and "Netscape Composer for Dummies".

Changes notwithstanding, we still like it
Trying to keep up with constant changes (happening in Internet time to boot) is a challenge at best. Doing that while providing substantive information about how a service like AltaVista really works is an even bigger challenge.

Looking back at this book and the changes in the interface over the past six months, we're remarkably pleased with how accurate and timely the information remains--the basics of how to search effectively, how to use the additional features well, and (our favorite) the story of how AltaVista came to be provide the kind of information that we look for in books we buy.

We hope you enjoy the book.