Top 300 Web sites Getting the most from a search engine Finding anything on the Internet is a time-consuming task, and without search engines it would certainly be a lot worse. What new users of search engines want most of all is a driving lesson. Unfortunately, the engines themselves seem to indicate the opposite. This is a recipe for chaos and confusion, as AltaVista doesn't understand many questions and, if you enter a few words, gives you all the pages that contain any of the words used. Either way, the result is a mass of irrelevancy.
Some search engines take other approaches.
Sites like Lycos and HotBot let you restrict the search via pull-down menus. But they do this in a particularly computer- like way, with Boolean variables and switch characters that have more to do with database query languages than everyday English. There is some good news, though. As most of the search engines use identical or very similar syntax for their queries, a few simple tricks with the query language, once learned, will work on all of them. They'll help you find what you need more reliably and much more quickly without turning you into a database retrieval expert.