By Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com
Reprinted with permission from Internet Search Advantage, ZD Journals. http://www.zdjournals.com
How to translate this article into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, or GermanComment traduire en français, Cómo traducir a los españoles, Come tradurre in italiano, Como traduzir em portuguêses, Wie man in Deutschen übersetzt.
I've been getting a lot of E-mail lately, all very interesting. Based on the E-mail responses to my articles here in Power Searching with AltaVista, I think we need to take a look at what AltaVista is very good at and at those instances where it makes sense to get your answers another way. AltaVista Search can be useful in a great many circumstances, but it doesn't offer the best solution for every problem in the Internet world. Just as you can cut meat with a fork, sometimes you're better off using a knife. Likewise, while a complex and careful search in AltaVista Search may get you the answer to your question, in some cases you can find a simpler or better solution.
AltaVista's unique strengths include:
If a search on AltaVista Search doesn't readily get you what you want, you have many alternatives. For instance, suppose you want to see a list of all the colleges in California. For that, go to Yahoo! at http://www.yahoo.com. From its home page, shown in Figure A, click Universities under Education, then click United States, Private by State, and/or Public by State and California.
Figure A: Click Universities under Education
on Yahoo!'s home page.
Once you've chosen the name of a particular college from that list, use AltaVista Search to find information about the college and its related links. (To find hyperlinks to its site, use link:, and to get a picture of everything that's at the college's site, use host:, refine, then graphics. Think of these search methods as complementary rather than competing, and get the most out of the abilities of both.) Likewise, you may want the phone number or address of an individual or a business. If that person or business has a Web site and a distinctive name, AltaVista Search could be a quick and easy way to get what you want. If not, try one of the white pages/yellow pages directories on the Net. Of course, you could use AltaVista Search to find such directories. A simple search for
directory "find people" "white pages" will give you an enormous number of matches, as you can see in Figure B.
Figure B: AltaVista Search returned more than 15,000 directories
to your search.
My favorite people-search directory is Switchboard, shown in Figure C and located at http://www.switchboard.com. Switchboard includes listings gleaned from phone books as well as entries provided directly by individuals and companies. The details you gather from such a directory can help you make effective AltaVista Search queries for further details. (Tidbits like the phone number and Zip code can help quickly focus a search that otherwise will yield tens of thousands of matches.)
Figure C: Switchboard's home page offers directories of
individuals and businesses.
There are specialized directories for all kinds of useful information. For instance, Figure D shows Four11, located at http://www.four11.com. This site is handy for finding someone's E-mail address. Also, Liszt, located at http://www.liszt.com, lets you find E-mail distribution lists you might want to check out. You can search Liszt's database of more than 70,000 lists or navigate your way through its categorized menus (as you would at Yahoo!). As you can see in Figure E, a search on AltaVista Search for
+directory +"whatever kind of thing you are looking for" may well point you to a new specialized directory that will suit your needs. (In Figure E, our "directory" is Liszt and we're searching for direct-marketing information.)
Figure D: The home page for Four11 will help you find an
E-mail address.
Figure E: You can use AltaVista Search to locate specialized
information in directories such as Liszt.
Also, the folks at Internic, the organization that originally managed the distribution of domain names, maintains and directs you to some very useful directories. If you're trying to figure out who runs a particular Web site or if you have a host name in the form of a number and want to know what conventional URL that number translates to, go to http://www.internic.net and click on Internic's Directory and Database Services. One of its directories, Webfinder, is particularly helpful if you're looking for the home page of a particular company.
If you're looking only for newsgroups, you should check the newsgroups-only search engine, DejaNews, at http://www.dejanews.com. As you can see in Figure F, not only can you search the contents of newsgroup items (as you can at AltaVista Search), but you also can post your own items to newsgroups, even if your Internet service provider doesn't offer USENET newsgroup services.
Figure F: DejaNews offers a newsgroup-only search engine.
As a general rule, be flexible and creative, and take advantage of the variety of search and directory capabilities on the Web. Try to find the right combination of search tools for the job. There are times when you should use AltaVista Search to find specialized directories. Then, you can use those directories to get additional facts that will help you accomplish more focused and effective searches at AltaVista Search.
My article on job hunting ("Finding Jobs and Being Found for Jobs" in the July issue) has generated lots of correspondence. (In case you'd like to point friends to that article, it's also available at the AltaVista Search site at http://www.altavista.digital.com/av/content/get_a_job.htm). I heard from folks in India and England, and from
My advice in that article was twofold. First, I suggested that when looking for a job, you use the advanced-search feature and enter in the search field "job OR career" and in the Ranking field words describing the kind of job you want and where you want it. I also suggested that if you were trying to recruit someone, you should enter in the search field resume and in the Ranking field words describing the qualifications you're looking for. My second piece of advice was to post your resume on the Web and to do so "flypaper" style in the HTML title. Begin the first line of text with resume and then describe the kind of job you're looking for. Finally, go to AltaVista Search and add the URL for that page.
Some of the people responding didn't have their own Web pages. Understandably, they were confused by the "flypaper" advice. My suggestion to them was to supplement their AltaVista searches with The Top 100 Electronic Recruiters Web site (from The Internet Business Network at http://www.interbiznet.com/eeri). This site provides a simple way to submit resumes to or search job postings at the top 100 job-related Web sites.
While writing the book The AltaVista Search Revolution, I heard from Bernadette Price in Portland, Oregon. She had searched AltaVista for Gowganda, the name of the tiny town in northern Ontario where she grew up. She used the search results not just for gleaning information, but rather as a starting point for a unique social adventure. AltaVista Search connected her with the Auld Reekie Lodge, a tourist spot in the town, and from there she was able to get in touch with an old friend, Gertrude Trudel. Then the two of them put together "The Great Gowganda Get-Together" by using all the tricks they could come up with on the Internet, including AltaVista Search, various directories and a personal Web page, plus phone, snail mail, and the news media. The event finally took place over Labor Day weekend. Here's what she had to say about it.
From: Bernadette Price < Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 14:19:15 -0700 Subject: Re: how did the Labor Day get together go?
Oh, Richard, it was wonderful, to say the least! I've been back a week now, and have been too busy catching up on work, etc., to update the Great Gowganda Get-Together home page, but will hopefully have time this weekend. The best part is that just about EVERYONE came "home" again--it was amazing! So many of us hadn't seen each other since we were children, over three decades ago. We had close to 500 people come that weekend ... and this is a town with a year-round population of under 100!
The Toronto Star was fabulous! They gave the story FRONT PAGE coverage on July 28, and then they arranged for a reporter to do a follow-up at the reunion, complete with a photo of me and my friend Gertie Trudel. That piece ran the next day, the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend. Gertie had done so much work from her end and made about 200 phone calls, and so I arranged with Northern Telephone and the Telephone Pioneers of America group there to donate a used computer to her in thanks for all her community effort. Finally, Gertie will be online! It's been AWFUL trying to keep up on the planning with her through expensive phone calls and the oh-so-slow snail mail! She and her husband have no idea how wonderful computers and the Internet are (and wait until they're online and discover AltaVista! :-), so they haven't bothered looking into getting one before this. I bet they will wonder how it was possible to live without one before!
We got so much "local" coverage as well--lots of those "dinky" little papers up in northern Ontario featured us on the front page as well--the angle, of course, being on this "newfangled modern technology" bringing about the reunion. The press coverage isn't over, either. There's a piece that will run in Net-Life Magazine that goes out to 140,000 Internet subscribers in Canada who use Sympatico, and then I got a call from Toronto Computes! magazine and they are doing a piece for their October issue. So is Northern Telephone in their publication, plus they are giving Gertie a one-year free Internet subscription to go with the used computer she got.
I've been too busy to update the web page, but I have tons of photos and lots of text to recap the unbelievably great time we all had, and I hope to do so this weekend.
By all means, feel free to use whatever you like in your article for the Cobb newsletter. Any chance you could include the URL for the Great Gowganda Get-Together home page? http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Rapids/2297.
Thanks for your interest in how the reunion came out. I would have let you know in due course anyway, as soon as I got head above water! :-) Sheesh, one thing about vacations is that you really need another one as soon as you get back!
Best regards, Bernadette
Figure G shows Bernadette's home page for the Great Gowganda Get-Together. Her enthusiasm is evident, too. Figure G: The Great Gowganda Get-Together evolved from a search inspired by The AltaVista Search Revolution.
When you use AltaVista Search, remember it's just one tool among many available on the Internet. Don't neglect all the old ways you've used for years to find information and contact people. You don't have to give up one way of doing things to use another. Rather, let yourself expand the range of what you can do by creatively using the new capability in concert with all the rest. If your project really matters to you, put some work into it like Bernadette did, and then send us E-mail to let us know about it.
As you try these techniques, please let us know about your successes and failures. Send us your tips, the creative approaches you've tried, and your questions. You can reach the author directly at seltzer@samizdat.com.
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