Speech-Friendly Search Engine Query Submission Forms
Use the following links to jump to the reformatted query
submission form for the search engine you wish to query:
- Alex Catalog of Electronic Texts
- Alcuin
- Alta Vista
- Anzwers
- Dogpile
- Excite
- Infoseek
- Liszt: A Searchable
Directory of Email Discussion Groups
- Lycos
- LookSmart
- Magellan
- MetaCrawler
- Nerd World
- Open Text Index
- Veronica
- WebCrawler
- Yahoo
Alex
Use Alex,
the North Carolina State University Libraries' Catalog of Electronic
Texts to search for a specific work by title, by subject, or author.
Alex is not only the quickest way to find etexts, but the easiest
way to download them from the web...
Alcuin
Like Alex,
Alcuin is an etext
search engine maintained by the North Carolina State University
Libraries. What distinguishes Alcuin from Alex, is its
hypertextual interface. Alex uses the
Niso Common Command
Language. When entering your search terms, you can:
- enter a simple phrase, such as:
- qualify your searches by author and title fields:
- use the text-string au to specify a search-by-author
- use the text-string ti to specify a search-by-title
- use boolean operators to execute complex searches, such as:
- aristotle or plato not (republic)
- use the following wildcards:
- ? (a question mark) to signify multiple characters
- or # (a number/american pound sign) to signify just one
character
Alta Vista
The following submission form will allow you to perform a quick, simple
search of either the over 30 million web pages or the 14,000 Usenet
newsgroups indexed by Digital's Alta Vista search engine. The default settings for this form are:
Search Web and Display detailed entries. These can be
changed to Search Usenet and Display Compact. Note
that Alta Vista is case-sensitive, which means that the use of capital
letters in a search query will limit the number of matches returned.
- AltaVista Help Files
- Using AltaVista and other useful tips
- Frequently Asked Questions about AltaVista and the Web
- Advanced Query Help
- the importance of parentheses
- how searches work
- Constraining searches in Web pages
- Constraining searches in Usenet news
- Words, phrases, capitalization, accents and notation
ANZWERS
ANZWERS is Australia's premier Internet search engine, with an index of
over 54 million documents. To find what you are looking for, simply choose
your search parameters, fill in the text entry form, define a few more
parameters, and then click on the "Submit Search" button.
Dogpile
Dogpile is a parallel search engine that will submit your
queries to:
- Web Searches (activate "The Web" radio button):
- Yahoo!, Lycos' A2Z, Excite Guide, World Wide Web Worm, WWW Yellow Pages,
PlanetSearch, What U Seek, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, OpenText, AltaVista,
Excite, and HotBot
- Usenet (activate the "Usenet" radio button):
- Hotbot News, Reference.com, Dejanews, Infoseek News, Altavista, and
Dejanews' old Database
- FTP (activate the "FTP" radio button):
- Filez, FTP Search, and Snoopie! (note: Only the first word in your
query will be passed on to the FTP search engines)
The unique twist to Dogpile is that you can execute two distinct
searches simultaneously. For example, if you are trying to locate a
DOS-based sound utility, you can not only query "The Web" but "FTP" sites as
well. You can also tell Dogpile how long you are willing to wait while
it searches (the default value is 40 seconds).
Dogpile Help Files
Infoseek
Infoseek,
the self-proclaimed "proof of intelligent life on the net" is a useful search
engine if only because it lets you ask a normal english question, such as
where are the speech-friendly sites?
To query Infoseek, type a specific question,
phrase or proper name in the following text
entry field, and choose what corner of cyberspace you wish to explore:
- Infoseek Tips
- 1. Search Tips
- 2. How to Search
- 3. How to
Browse
- 4. Quick
Reference
- 5. Search Examples
- 6. Advanced
Searching
Liszt: Searchable Directory of Email Discussion Groups
Liszt is the
largest searchable directory of email lists, containing listings for (at last
count) 53,988 listserv, listproc, majordomo and independently managed
lists from 1803 sites.
Use the following form to submit a search-query to
Liszt. Examples of valid queries are:
baseball
baseball texas
b*ball or f*ball
html or java or "cgi"
india not indiana
"bad art"
"art" not (rock or game or tattoo)
Looksmart
LookSmart claims to have shifted through the millions of
web pages in order to separate the wheat from the chaff... While their
database is limited, and it does tilt excessively towards official
(read: commercial) sites, LookSmart is an interesting
work-in-progress. You can use the following form to search
LookSmart's annotated database (the default setting) or
to search either AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo...
Magellan
Search Magellan for:
Browse Magellan by Topic
MetaCrawler
Below are two reformatted query submission forms for the
MetaCrawler Parallel Web
Search Service.
The first form allows you to perform a Fast
Search. The default setting for a Fast Search is search
for an exact match, but you can change the value to force
MetaCrawler to search for any of the words you typed
into the text-entry field or to submit your query as a phrase.
The second form allows you take full adavantage of
MetaCrawler's sophisticated software by refining
your search criteria.
Metacrawler Query Syntax
To increase the quality of your results, you may wish to utilize the special
syntax understood by the Metacrawler. Embedding the following symbols in
your search string when executing either a simple or a complex search
allows the expression of complex search parameters.
- QUOTATION MARKS/QUOTES: " ... "
- Quotation marks/double quotes causes MetaCrawler to identify the
collections of words contained within the double quotes as a phrase.
Words in a phrase will only count as hits if they appear relatively close
together. Multiple phrases can appear in one search string, as in the
following example:
- "Monty Python" "Flying Circus"
- THE PLUS SIGN: +
- A plus sign to designates a word that must be present in the
document. To search for information about Windows 95 and exclude references to
Windows 3.x, for example, you would type:
- THE MINUS SIGN: -
- A minus sign designates a word that must not be present in
the document. To search for informattion about Windows and exclude
references to Windows 95, for example, you would type:
- More Examples of Metacrawler Search Syntax
- +blind -venetian -melon -lemon -jefferson -taste -test -date
- "+Phil +Zimmerman" PGP -RIPEM "Pretty Good Privacy"
- "+Erik Warren +Selberg" -speed
- Note that the following do not work:
- +"Erik Selberg"
- Erik AND Selberg
- Erik-Selberg
- Erik + Selberg
- for further assistance on formatting Metacrawler queries, consult:
Nerd World
Nerd
World's Easy Access Category Tree
Open Text
If you are looking for specific information on the Internet, try
One of the most powerful search engines on the web, the Open Text Index allows
you search for words, phrases, or combinations of words and phrases
within hypertext documents. Use the following form to
perform a simple, refinable, search... Note that the text-entry field
is seperated from the submit and reset buttons by three radio boxes, each
of which occupies a single line. The first radio box, this exact
phrase, is the default, which means it is always checked unless you
check one of the other two radio boxes. Activating the second radio box
(Lynx users, tab to the checkbox field and press enter) forces the search
engine to look only for entries which contain all of
the words you typed in the text entry field. Activating the third radio
box (Lynx users, tab to the checkbox field and press enter) forces the
search engine to search for any of the words typed into the text
entry field...
Veronica
For information on composing Veronica queries, read the
"How to Compose Veronica Queries" documentation.
For the quickest search, use the Veronica search engine located
nearest to you geographically. If all of the Veronica searchers
near you are unavailable, try one located on the other side of the globe,
i.e. somewhere where it's the middle of the night...
A comprehensive list of VERONICA
Searchers in GOPHERSPACE provides links to Veronica gopherspace
searchers worldwide...
When typing a search-string in the following text-entry field, use
quotation marks (that is, double quotes), to signify a specific phrase to
be matched, otherwise WebCrawler will search for an occurance
of each word you submit. For specific examples of WebCrawler
syntax, consult
the WebCrawler help files.
WebCrawler Help Files:
Categories:
probably one of--if not the--most popular commercial search engines,
Yahoo!'s introductory screens can
prove confusing when using speech in conjunction with a text-based browser...
to speed up searches using yahoo!, you can directly submit a search
request to yahoo! by typing a search term in the text-entry field
located directly below this text. (Lynx users: once you have typed in a
query, press the "tab" key once, and hit "enter" to submit your search)
comments? criticism? suggestions?
email oedipus@hicom.net
- return to Camera Obscura,
the womb without a view
- Caveat Lector
- Civitas
- Etext Archives, Scholarly and
Academic Resources
- Hystery, Mistory, Prophecy:
proof that truth is stranger than fiction...
- Mea Maxima Culpa: guilty
leisures and other inanities...
- Newspapers, News Services, and 'Zines
of Every Ilk
- The Virtual Museum: text-only
excursions to online exhibits...
this page last modified April 1, 1998