Search Strategies for the Internet

IV Fact Sheets

MSN Search

http//search.msn.com/
http://search.msn.co.uk/
http://www.msn.com/
http://www.msn.co.uk/

Key features

• feed: command for locating RSS and Atom feeds on a web site
• url: command for checking whether a domain or page is in the MSN Search index
• prefer: command increases the weighting and importance of a term in a search
• contains: to limit a search to pages that have links to a specified file type
• Results Ranking slider bars in Search Builder change the order in which results are listed
• accurate and reliable link and linkdomain commands

Search options

Default search type		Searches for all of your words
Case sensitive?		No
Wildcard/Truncation		No
Phrases and proximity		"……" For example "building society"
Mandatory search terms		Plus sign (+) before stop words such as "the", "of", "in" for example "accidents +in +the home".
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:eiger
Linked pages	link: to search for pages that link to a specific page, for example link:www.rba.co.uk/sources/ or linkdomain for pages that link to anywhere on a site, for example linlkdomain:www.rba.co.uk
Similar pages	No

Domain/site search	site: For results from a particular type of domain, for example site:.ac.uk for academic sites in the UK or to search one specific web site, for example site:statistics.gov.uk
File type	filetype: to specify a non-html document, for example filetype:pdf
Cached copy available	Yes. Can be viewed from the results list.
Boolean search	AND, OR, NOT must be in capital letters
Specify language	Language:
Limit by country	loc: or location: or use Search Builder
Limit by date	No
Unique features	feed: - locates RSS and Atom feeds on a web site url: - checks whether a domain or page is in the MSN Search index prefer: -increases the weighting and importance of a term in a search contains: - to limit a search to pages that have links to a specified file type

PDF Version (23 KB)