Search Strategies for the Internet

IV Fact Sheets

Ask

http://www.ask.com/
http://www.ask.co.uk/

Key features

• web results ranked in a different order compared with other search engines
• "Zoom" feature that suggests way of broadening or narrowing down your web search
• current news service covering the last 30 days of free articles on the web
• picture/image search often comes up with very different results compared with other engines
• excellent feed and blog search

Search options

Default search type	All of your words
Case sensitive?	No
Wildcard/Truncation	No
Phrases and proximity	"……" For example "climate change"
Mandatory search terms	Plus sign (+) before stop words such as "the", "of"
Exclude pages containing a term	Minus sign (-) before the word, for example branson -balloon
Word in the URL	inurl: for pages with the term in their URL, for example inurl:chocolate
Word in title	intitle: for pages that contain the adjacent word in the title, for example intitle:chocolate
Linked pages	No
Similar pages	No
Limit by domain/site	site: to limit by part of a domain name, for example site:uk for UK sites, or to search one specific web site, for example site:statistics.gov.uk
File type	No
Cached copy available	No.
Boolean search	OR (must be in capital letters)
Specify language	Advanced Search
Limit by country	Advanced Search - limits by continent/region, not individual country
Limit by date	Advanced Search
Unique features	"Zoom" - suggests strategies for narrowing and down and expanding your search

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