Within the phrase, it only replaces one word but can be combined with other terms that use the truncation symbol. In all other cases, a minimum of three characters before the truncation symbol is required. Also, the wildcard matches only lowercase characters not uppercase letters or numbers. Searches are generally not case sensitive. All simple searches used to be case sensitive but only quoted terms are now.
Searches are case sensitive.
If search terms are entered completely in lower case, all mixtures of upper and lower case are searched. See AltaVista's field list or the descriptions below. Do not leave a space after the field name or after the colon. Pages containing a Java applet with the term in the name. For top-level domain only.