Here you'll find how the search engines search and how to use them more effectively

Altavista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo, Yahooligans, Magellan, GoTo, Google, Dejanews,
Quick Reference, Domain types,

Search Engine Watch -- Everything you want to know about search engines

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How it works: Altavista from Digital Equipment Corporation, is the latest spider search tool. You have access to all the words found in millions of Web pages. Altavista does not maintain a systematical index or catalogue. It also offers a full-text search of most newsgroups. Altavista provides extensive options on how to phrase a query.

Search Fields: Full-Web Page Contents (including URLs), Full-Text News Search Options: Substring/Word/Phrase, Multiple Keywords(OR)/Phrases, Wildcard(*) All lower case letters in a word indicate a case-insensitive match. But if you type any capital letters, you force an exact case match on the entire word.

How to use:
When in doubt, use lowercase text in your searches. When you use lowercase text, the search service finds both upper and lowercase results. When you use upper case text, the search service finds only upper case. Example: When you search for paris, you'll find Paris, paris, and PARIS in your result pages. However, when you search for Paris, you'll only see Paris in the result pages.

Including or excluding words: To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box. Example: To find recipes for cookies with oatmeal but without raisins, try recipe cookie +oatmeal -raisin.

Expand your search using wildcards (*): By typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings. Example: Try wish*, to find wish, wishes, wishful, wishbone, and wishy-washy.

AltaVista searches more than just text. Here are all of the other ways you can search on the net:

anchor:text Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the text of a hyperlink. anchor:"Click here to visit AltaVista" would find pages with "Click here to visit AltaVista" as a link.
applet:class Finds pages that contain a specified Java applet. Use applet:morph to find pages using applets called morph.
domain:domainname Finds pages within the specified domain. Use domain:de to find pages from Germany, or use domain:org to find pages from organizations.
host:name Finds pages on a specific computer. The search host:altavista.digital.com would find pages on the AltaVista computer, and host:dilbert.unitedmedia.com would find pages on the computer called dilbert at unitedmedia.com.
image:filename Finds pages with images having a specific filename. Use image:elvis to find pages with images called elvis.
link:URLtext Finds pages with a link to a page with the specified URL text. Use link:altavista.digital.com to find all pages linking to AltaVista.
text:text Finds pages that contain the specified text in any part of the page other than an image tag, link, or URL. The search text:cow9 would find all pages with the term cow9 in them.
title:text Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the page title (which appears in the title bar of most browsers). The search title:Elvis would find pages with Elvis in the title.
url:text Finds pages with a specific word or phrase in the URL. Use url:altavista to find all pages on all servers that have the word altavista in the host name, path, or filename--the complete URL, in other words.

How it works: Excite is your guide to the Internet and more. It's your one-stop place for finding information of all kinds on the internet. NetSearch is comprehensive and detailed. It contains lots of information for you to search over -- Web pages, two weeks of Usenet news articles and classified ads. It's the best way to find exactly the information you're sure you want.

Excite also takes search technology one step further by using a unique concept-based approach to search. Like most search engines, Excite Search looks for documents containing the exact words you entered into the query box. But Excite goes further and also looks for ideas closely related to the words in your query.

Search Fields: Contents (Web Page), Usenet News and NewsGroups, Classified Advertisements. Does not read meta-tags (keyword, description, classification, author)

Search Options: Substring/Word/Phrase, Multiple Keywords (OR), Case In-Sensitive.
In advanced search, more options are available:Select Search Mode: Keyword Searching: Usual keyword searching. Concept-based Searching: Keyword searching can be very limiting, because of this restriction that the document actually contain one of the search-phrase words. Concept-Based searching finds what you mean, not just what you say.
Select View Modes : Grouped by Confidence (default) : List in order from highest calculated relevance down. Grouped by Site (Web pages/sites only) Represent which documents come from which Web sites, and how those documents are organized relative to each other at those sites.

Try "More Like This": If you find that one of the Web results better describes what you are searching for, click on "More Like This" next to the title. Excite Search will then use that document as the basis for a new search to find more sites similar to the result you selected.

Be specific: Use specific words as opposed to general ones. For example, a search for "Lamborghini" will return more targeted results than a search for "sports cars."

Use "List by Web Site": Use the "List by Web site" function. Excite's list of search results may present several pages from the same site. When you click on the "List by Web site" link, your list will compress to show the names of the sites and relevant documents within them.

Try an Advanced Search: Use the "+" (plus) sign for words that your results MUST contain. Or use the "-" (minus) sign in your query to tell the search engine that your results should NOT contain a certain word. When using these options, do not leave any space between the sign and the word. (See below for more details on the Advanced Search feature.)

Try a "Power Search": Excite's Power Search feature makes it easy for you to perform an advanced search without having to use advanced syntax. You can also control how many search results are returned and what type of content you want to search against. For your search, choose among the following sources of information: World Wide Web, Selected Web Sites, Current News, Excite Germany, Excite France, Excite UK, Excite Sweden, and Usenet Newsgroups. Back to the top

Advanced Search Tips:
Search for exact phrases: When searching for phrases such as Better Business Bureau or San Francisco 49ers, enclose the phrase in quotation marks, i.e. "San Francisco 49ers". Using the quotation marks tells the search engine to find those words, in that specific sequence.

Try using plus (+) and minus (-) signs: These signs indicate which terms must (+) and must not (-) be present in the returned documents. When using these options, do not leave any space between the sign and the word.

Plus (+) If you put a plus sign directly in front of a word, all documents Excite retrieves will contain that word. So if you search for +billiards +rules, you'll be sure to get the rules of the game. Remember, you must mark each word appropriately to have these tools work. For instance, if you type billiards +rules, all of the documents returned will have "rules" in the text, but not necessarily billiards.

Minus (-) If you put a minus sign directly in front of a word, Excite will NOT retrieve documents containing that word. So if you search for +billiards -equipment -supplies, you'll be spared the billiards-related documents that emphasize equipment and supplies.

AND Documents found must contain all words joined by the AND operator. For example, to find documents that contain the words "wizard,""oz," and "movie," enter: wizard AND oz AND movie

OR Documents found must contain at least one of the words joined by OR. For example, to find documents that contain the word "cat" or the word "kitten," enter: cat OR kitten

AND NOT Documents found cannot contain the word that follows the term "AND NOT." For example, to find documents that contain the word "pets" but not the word "dogs," enter: cat AND NOT kitten

( ) Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together for more complicated queries. For example, to find documents that contain the word "fruit" and either the word "banana" or the word "apple," enter: fruit AND (banana OR apple)

How it works: The HotBot Search Engine (by Inktomi) is a Web indexer with a large database of more than 110 million documents. HotBot's pulldown menus and buttons let you modify or refine your search. Use these tools to narrow your search by placing more conditions on the query.

Search Fields: Contents, Titles, URLs/Links (HTML Addresses)
Search Options: Substring/Word, Multiple Keywords (OR), Case In-Sensitive, Limit Number of Matches, "+keyword" to indicate that 'keyword' must be in the document; "-keyword" to indicate that it must not. Limited Selection of Domain Root (only in Search for the Domain Name).

How to use:
1. Use at least two or three search terms. By using more keywords to narrow your search, you can locate documents that fit your information needs more precisely. Adding query terms is the easiest way to focus your search quickly - you can add terms directly to the text box on the results page. When using the default all the words setting, adding search terms narrows your results.

Search terms # of matches Jobs 681,718 Jobs consulting 51,452 Jobs consulting engineering 21,770 Jobs consulting engineering civil 6,568

3. Using all the words vs. any of the words. By default, HotBot displays documents containing all the words in your search query (Note: This is the equivalent of a Boolean AND search). By setting the main search pulldown menu to any of the words, you'll find documents that contain as few as one of your requested words (a Boolean OR search). This will increase the number of documents that are returned. HotBot's relevance ranking will automatically favor documents that contain the greatest number of your search words.

4. Use exact phrases. You can narrow your search by requesting that your search terms appear in order as an exact phrase. Select the exact phrase from the search pulldown menu, or simply enclose your phrase in double quotes (" "). For example, if you are looking for database administrators, search for these words as a phrase. This produces one-fifteenth as many matches. You can also mix phrases with single search terms in the search box, for example: "auto parts" BMW.

5. Give 'More Search Options' a spin. HotBot's detailed search is a powerful, but easy-to-understand, extension of the regular HotBot search interface. 'More Search Options' allows you to enter additional search terms, specify additional media types, and much more.

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How it works:
InfoSeek offers a full text search service that makes finding information easy. This service is geared to professionals who want the latest and most in-depth information. InfoSeek's search robot regularly grabs text from sites across the Web, and puts them in a precise index. With InfoSeek you can search WWW Pages, Usenet News, Computer Magazines, Newspaper Newswires and Press releases, Company Profiles, Movie Reviews, Technical Support Databases, and much more.
Around since early 1995, Infoseek is well-known, well-reviewed and well-connected. The old "Infoseek Guide" index only had about 1 to 2 million URLs cataloged. In Fall 1996, the new service with 50 million URLs was introduced.
Infoseek runs a directory separate from its search engine. Sites are listed by topic, which are automatically generated using categorization software. Some sites also are listed with red check marks. These are Infoseek Select Sites, which have been reviewed and are recommended by Infoseek.

Search Fields: URLs, Contents, Usenet News
Search Options: Substring/Word/Phrase, Multiple Keywords (OR), Case Sensitive, Use double quotation marks (" ") around words which must appear next to each other. Use hyphens (-) around words which must appear within one word of each other. Use a plus sign (+) to identify terms that must appear in every document. Use a minus sign (-) to identify words or phrases that should not appear in any document. Use square brackets ([ ])around terms that should appear in the same area of a document.

How to use it: Follow these steps if you're new to the Web, or if you're an advanced user and would like a refresher course on making the most of your search and finding exactly what you need.

Step One: Type words likely to be found only in the documents you seek ruby slippers toto
Step Two: Identify phrases (a sentence, or a string of words) with quotation marks "ruby slippers" toto
Step Three: Identify proper names with capitalization "ruby slippers" Toto
Step Four: Identify required terms with a plus (+) sign +"ruby slippers" +Toto
Step Five: Identify undesired terms with a minus (-) sign +"ruby slippers" +Toto -"rock band"

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Lycos

How it works:
Lycos uses a spider to extract information from web sites regularly. The results are merged weekly into its systematic catalogue. Lycos includes Gopher and FTP addresses and gives you many search options, some of which appear in this search page. Lycos indexes non-text Internet resources including graphics, sounds, full-motion video and executable programs. For each document fetched, Lycos keeps the title, headings, subheadings, links, the 100 highest weighted words (using Tf*IDf weighting) and the first 20 lines.
Lycos provides the user with not only a list of all the sites a search has found, but also a ranking of the sites based on a "popularity" score for each of the sites. The popularity score for a particular site is calculated on the total number of other sites that contain links to that site. Lycos now offers the 'Lycos Hot Lists'; the most popular sites (based on number of link to a site) arranged by subject matter.
Around since May 1994, Lycos is one of the oldest of the major search engines. It began as a project at Carnegie Mellon University. The name Lycos comes from the Latin for "wolf spider."

Search Fields: URLs/Links (HTML Addresses, GOPHER(limited), FTP(limited)), Titles, Headings/SubHeadings, Contents (Keywords/First 20 lines)
Search Options: Substring/Word, Multiple Keywords (OR), Keywords Match Mode (AND/OR, Number or Type of keywords matches), Case In-Sensitive, Limit Number of Matches, Display Options: Standard, Summary or Detailed.

How to use it:
Looking for a Phrase (" ") .You'll often be searching for a word pattern that appears just as you've typed it. Examples are full names or phrases. You can tell Lycos to match your word pattern exactly by enclosing it in quotation marks. For example: "David Hasselhoff"

Excluding Words (-) You wouldn't know it by browsing the Web, but they still publish magazines that have nothing to do with computers. If you wanted to find information on magazines other than those related to computers, Lycos can help you do that. Use the minus (-) command in front of any word to screen out that word.

Requiring Words (+) The opposite of banning terms from your search results is requiring that certain words show up in the documents Lycos finds. Use the plus sign (+) before a "must-have" word that you want to include: Baywatch +Hasselhoff

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How it works: The WebCrawler (now operated by America Online) gathers indexes of the total contents of documents. The database is indexed by content; that means that the contents of documents are indexed, including their titles and URLs.
The WebCrawler has different functions: It builds indices for documents it finds on the Web. The broad, content-based index is available for searching. It acts as an agent, searching for documents of particular interest to the user. In doing so, it draws upon the knowledge accumulated in its index and some simple strategies to bias the search toward interesting material.

Search Fields: Titles, URLs/Links (HTML Addresses), Contents. No meta-tags(keywords, descriptin, classification, author)
Search Options: Substring/Word, Multiple Keywords (AND/OR).

How to use it: You can customize WebCrawler to display your search results the way you want, if your browser supports cookies. You can view just the titles of the documents your search has returned, or see a short summary of each document: You can also select the number of results you would like to see on each page: 10 25 100 More Results

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How it works: Yahoo is a massive, essential index of Web pages organized into categories. It features a hierarchically organised subject-oriented tree. It is probably the most complete hierarchical subject index on the Web: if it's not there, it probably doesn't exist... Yahoo does not rely on spiders, which constantly search the Web for new sites, but on the owners of Web sites who make their sites known to Yahoo. Before a site is accepted and categorised, it is reviewed by humans. If Yahoo can not find what you are looking for, it passes the query on to Altavista.
Around since late 1994, Yahoo is the oldest major web site directory. Yahoo is well-known, well-used and well-respected. It is also the largest directory (as opposed to search engine), listing 750,000 web sites, as of Dec. 1997.

Search Fields: Subjects, Titles, URLs (HTML Addresses), Comments.
Search Options: Substring/Word/Phrase, Multiple Keywords (AND/OR), Case Sensitivity, Limit Number of Matches.

How to use it:
After you have specified keyword(s) inside the query box and clicked on the search button, Yahoo (unless otherwise specified) will search through the four areas of its database for keyword matches. The four areas are:

Yahoo! Categories
Yahoo! Web Sites
Yahoo!'s Net Events & Chat
Most Recent News Articles.

Multiple Keyword Matches: Documents matching more of the keywords will have a higher rank than those matching less.
Document Section Weighting: Documents matching words found in the Title are ranked higher than those found in its Body or URL.
Generality of Category: Categories matching higher up in the Yahoo tree hierarchy (i.e.- more general categories) are ranked higher than those deeper in the hierarchy (i.e. - more narrowly focused categories)

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How it works: Yahooligans! is a searchable, browsable index of the Internet designed for Web surfers ages 7 to 12. We want it to be your Web surfing tool of choice.

Search fields: Yahooligans! search titles, URLs, and comments to find listings that contain all of your search words.

How to use it: Yahooligans! will not pay attention to case (e.g., "Mickey Mouse" is treated just like "mickey mouse") and it will stop after it finds100 matches. A search retrieves three different kinds of information:

Categories that match your search words,
Web sites that match your search words,
Categories where those Web sites are listed.

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How it works: McKinley's newly named Magellan Internet Directory contains listings for more than one million Internet resources (sites), with over 30,000 described, reviewed and rated resources, including Telnet, Gopher, FTP, World Wide Web sites, mailing lists and news groups. Each resource includes the site title, address (URL), hot links, keyword and audience descriptors, and a full text description of the resource and its contents.

Using their powerful search technology, researchers at The McKinley Group can explore vast portions of the Internet very rapidly. Acquired data are automatically sorted, abstracted and organized under Magellan's easy-to-use indexing structure. The information is divided into 15 major categories, ranging from Business & Economics to Sports & Recreation, with hundreds of subcategories.

McKinley uniquely couples machine intelligence with human intelligence to analyze and catalogue Internet resources. New sites are pored over by teams of subject matter experts and information technology specialists. Promising sites are reviewed, rated and described in Magellan. Ratings system is based on depth of content, ease-of-access, organization of information and currency.

You can explore Magellan in one of two ways: Browse the Magellan Categories OR Search the Magellan. Whichever kind of exploration you choose, Magellan will give you a "hit list" of up to 60 sites. For each hit it shows the name of the site, its rating, a partial or full description (depending on the length of the description), and a button labeled "summary."

Search Fields: Subjects, Titles, URLs (HTML Addresses), Contents.
Search Options: Substring/Word/Phrase, Multiple Keywords (OR), Boolean (AND/OR/NOT), NEAR/n, ADJ, Wildcard(*), Exact Match, Case In-Sensitive.

How to use:
In advanced search only : Regular Search or Concept Search: Concept search broadens a search by generating a list of terms related to your search word(s) and looking for them in addition to the word(s) you entered. This enables Magellan to find sites that do not contain the search words themselves, but may be relevant to the topic.

Minimum Rating: To choose a minimum star rating for the sites on your hit list.
Length of Description: Select short, medium, or long to determine how much of the description of each site you want to be displayed on your hit list.
Include Categories: Limit your search to a particular category.

How it works: Only since early 1998 has GoTo replaced the World Wide Web Worm. It gathers information about documents/citations locations (URLs) and titles from Web servers rather than by spidering individual web pages. Compared to other Web search software, you might get fewer hits because GoTo only indexes hypertext references, the highlighted references to other pages or sites in Web documents. You may not get the most organized list from this type of search, but it's fast and does some things other searches won't: The GoTo provides a way to locate documents and citations. Each citation of a URL is cross-referenced with the document citing it (thus, a URL must be cited in some GoTo document page in order to be known to GoTo). Note! now URLs can be added manually. Any one URL may be cited in many different documents - GoTo will show them all.

Search Fields: Links(Label), Links(URL), Titles, URLs (HTML Addresses) :

- Search all Citation Hypertext: Search all Text of Links (Links(Label)). Useful to find references to a particular subject. - Search all Citation Addresses: Search all URLs of Links (Links(URL)). A Links(URL) may point to an HTML file, Text file, a GIF image, an MPEG movie, an AU sound file and so on. (Ex. <A HREF="http://this/is/an/URL.html"> This is a Citation </A>)
- Search only in HTML Titles: Search for Titles of Citing Documents. Useful to find Home Pages.
- Search only in HTML Addresses: Search for URLs of Citing Documents. Useful to find Home Pages locations.

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Google searches over 1.3 million sites more quickly, to bring you the most relevant results. Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PC's we've networked together to create a superfast search engine.
The heart of our software is PageRank(TM), a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

PageRank Explained
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Integrity
Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.

Basic Search
To enter a query into Google, just type in a few descriptive words and hit the 'enter' key (or click on the Google Search button) for your list of relevant results. Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. For instance, when Google analyzes a page, it looks at what those pages linking to that page have to say about it. Google also prefers pages in which your query terms are near each other.

Automatic "and" Queries
By default, Google only returns those pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms.
For example, to plan a vacation to Hawaii, simply type: vacation Hawaii . To restrict a search further, just include more terms.

Google does support the logical "or" operator. To tell Google to look for pages containing either word A or word B, use a capitalized 'OR' between terms. For example, to search for a vacation in either London or Paris, just type vacation London OR Paris.

Stop Words
Google ignores common words and characters, known as stop words. Google automatically disregards such terms as "where" and "how," as well as certain single digits and single letters, because these terms rarely help narrow a search, and can slow down searching significantly. Use the "+" sign to include stop words in your search. Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign. You can also include the "+" sign in phrase searches.  For example, to search for Star Wars, Episode I, enter: Episode +I

See your search terms in context
Each Google search result contains one or more excerpt from the web page, which shows how your search terms are used in context on that page. Your search terms are bolded so you can tell at a glance whether the result is a page you want to visit.

Stemming
To provide the most accurate results, Google does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. In other words, Google searches for exactly the words that you enter in the search box. Searching for "googl" or "googl*" will not yield "googler" or "googlin." If in doubt, try both forms: "airline" and "airlines," for instance.

Does capitalization matter?
Google searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for "george washington", "George Washington", and "gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN" will all return the same results.

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You Can Make a Difference: Like any community, you get what you give. The Open Directory provides the opportunity for everyone to contribute.
Signing up is easy: choose a topic you know something about and join. Editing categories is a snap. We have a comprehensive set of tools for adding, deleting, and updating links in seconds. For just a few minutes of your time you can help make the Web a better place, and be recognized as an expert on your chosen topic.
Join the Open Directory Project: Find a category that you would like to maintain; Follow the Become an Editor link at the top of the category page. Note that there are no Become an Editor links on the top-level category pages; you should find a more specific category which interests you, and apply there.

Open Directory Search Guide
Simple search: Simple searches find entries that include all of the search terms. Search results are ranked and displayed 25 sites at a time. The sites that are displayed are grouped by their category. For example, a search on : C++ will return all the sites that have the word C++ in them. Searches with multiple terms will automatically insert an "and" between all the terms, so that only sites with all of the search words in them will be returned. For example, a search on: golf clubs will only return sites that have both golf and clubs in the sites name and description. Sites on "tennis clubs" or "golf balls" will not be displayed (unless they also mention golf and clubs).

Phrase Search:  Sometimes the order of the search terms matters. Using phrase searching can greatly reduce the number of sites that are matched by a search. For example if you searched for: "Tour de France" you would only get sites that had the three words: tour, de and France in them in that order.

Search Defaults: All searches use and as the default linking operator between all of the search terms. Thus searching for: red herring is the same as searching for: red and herring
For both of these searches, only those sites with "red" and "herring" in the site name or description will be returned. Sites that only mention "red" but not "herring" will not be displayed. To get sites with either "red" or "herring" use the keyword or. See the next section on using boolean operators.

Boolean Search: There are several boolean operators to choose from, they are: or, and, and andnot. Terms linked by the and operator will return only those sites that match all of the search terms linked by the and operator. This is the default, if you don't use any boolean operators, then only those sites that contain at least one occurrence of each search term will be returned.

Terms linked by the or operator will return those sites that match any of the search terms linked by or. For example: grey or gray and parrot
Terms linked by the andnot operator will exclude all sites that match the search term following the andnot. For example: random andnot house
will find sites about randomness, but exclude sites about the publisher, Random House.

Wildcard Search: The search can do some limited wildcarding. Specificly, wildcard completion. This is useful when you are trying to match a term that may or may not be plural or might have one of several verb tenses. For example if you wanted to find sites that had to do with bicycling you might use the following search: Bicycl* This would match sites on Bicycling, Bicycle, and Bicycles.
The search does not support arbitrary wildcards, so searches on "*cycling" or "Arch*ology" will not work.

Shorthand Search Terms: You can prefix search terms with "-" and "+" to force the exclusion or inclusion of that term. This is really just shorthand for using the andnot and and boolean operators. The following example will return all the sites on baseball, except those that mention "umpire."  +baseball -umpire
Note: You cannot begin a search with a "-" term. You must put some other search term first.
Complex Search: You can mix and match the above search methods to create very complex searches. This search will return all sites on Lego trains, but exclude all the links that mention Duplo: lego train* andnot duplo . This search will find references to racing, except those that are about racing cars or motorcycles:  racing -auto -car -motorcycle -road -nascar

What is MetaSearch? MetaSearch lets you search query many different search engines, while only having to type your query once. When you search, a "MetaSearch" bar appears at the bottom of the search results page. Clicking on one of the links will forward your query to another search engine, so you don't have to type it again.
AltaVista - Amazon.com - DejaNews - EuroFerret - EuroSeek - Excite - Google - GoTo - HotBot - Infind - Infoseek - Lycos - MetaCrawler - NewsTracker - Northern Light - WebCrawler - Yahoo
This makes the Open Directory a good place to start searches, since if you don't find anything in it, you can easily search other directories on the web too. And we don't just list the biggies -- we have cool but relatively unknown search engines such as Google.

Category Roulette: A search with an empty search box will return four categories picked at random from the Open Directory. Try it.
Search Technology: We use ISearch, to provide full text searching of our web site.

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How it works: Deja News is devoted to searching newsgroup discussions, with archives stretching back to March 1995.

Search Fields: Date, subject, author, newsgroup, content.

How to use: After you submit a quick search, you are presented with a Quick Search Results List, which consists of 20 article summaries per page, sorted by relevance to your search words. This article list displays the most important information about each article in a concise one-line display which shows the subject of the article, the date it was posted, the newsgroup it was posted to, and the author of the article.

Date: This field represents the date the article was posted to Usenet. This field can be searched instead of the body text of an article by using a context operator.
Score: The score is an arbitrary value assigned by the search engine representing how well the article matched your search criteria. Factors that influence the score include: Number of matches to the given keyword(s) (more matches increases the score); Ratio of keyword(s) to total words in the article's body (lower ratio increases the score). Posting date of the article (more recent increases the score).
Subject: The first line of the Quick Search Results contains the subject of the article. Following this link from a results page will display the full body text and header information of the article itself.
Newsgroup: This field shows the newsgroup the article was posted to. If the article was crossposted, the first group in the list of newsgroups the article was posted to will be displayed.
Author: This field shows the email address of the author of the listed article (may be abbreviated when viewing the search results page in concise mode). Often, the name or handle of the author will be attached to the email address. Following this link from either the search results page or from inside the article will display the author profile of the author who posted the article.