Above all, one is struck by the range of options and customization available. Chris Sherman, the About Guide to Web Search, is fond of many aspects of AltaVista. Sometimes one of the keywords in a search phrase is just so much more important, or so unique, that you want it to carry more weight than the other words. Advanced Search is Powerful, but Handle with Care One might conclude that users seeking a relevance ranking with less advanced Boolean search techniques might want to avoid the Advanced Search area. Users who want this power should bone up on how best to tap into it.
Searches can focus on color or black and white images.
The list of options goes on and on. Limit Your Search to Titles and Specific Domains Tara Calishain, publisher of ResearchBuzz , is also an AltaVista aficionado. Her repertoire of techniques for tapping into the power of Advanced Search would humble the average user, but for those who wish to get creative with the power of these tools, there are a lot of ways to find that proverbial needle in the haystack. Such tricks can help to track down items like syllabi for specific courses at universities across the country, for example. Sullivan also notes the vast multimedia search capability, and reminds us that AltaVista's index of the web is still quite large and therefore offers comprehensive coverage of the Internet.