Book details of 'The AltaVista Search Revolution: How to Find Anything on the Internet'

Title	The AltaVista Search Revolution: How to Find Anything on the Internet
Author(s)	Richard Seltzer, Eric J. Ray, Deborah S. Ray
ISBN	0078822351
Language	English
Published	October 1996
Publisher	McGraw-Hill

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Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
During its time on the Web, the AltaVista search engine has undergone several revisions and continues to evolve. Though it faces competition from a number of worthy competitors, it's fair to say that AltaVista ranks as the most feature-rich general-purpose Web search tool. This book helps you get the most out of AltaVista's power, using tables and examples to show you how to get what you need.The authors first explain how to do basic searches, then move on to more advanced searches with Boolean operators and AltaVista's special parameters. Chapters detail how to do such things as search Usenet newsgroups and how to translate hits into other languages. If, for instance, you want to limit a search to Australian pages, this guide details the procedure. A lengthy alphabetical chapter lists searches for particular targets and, in doing so, illustrates some unusual search strategies.Those who publish their own Web sites will appreciate the chapter that reveals how AltaVista ranks the sites it indexes. Many of the engine's ranking algorithms are secret (and remain so), but many others are public and receive satisfactory coverage. An entertaining appendix lists the words most frequently used in Web pages (the is the big winner) and an Excite-like list of the most searched-for words (though apparently with the raunchiness edited out). --David Wall --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
The word "the" is used 187,110,494 times on the Web: you can add another 27,587,905 if you add "The". The most common real word is "information". Canada is cited more frequently than California. Welcome to AltaVista. While some may cavil about various subjective considerations, to date I have not found an Internet search engine that can match AltaVista for flexibility, speed, or comprehensive coverage. Digital can be justifiably proud of AltaVista (or, more properly, AltaVista Search Public Service), even if they tend to overhype it from time to time. The first five chapters provide an introduction to AltaVista and a great many useful tips and pointers. (Chapter two even has a canned form that you can paste into your own Web pages.) Unfortunately, the screenshots are all taken from graphical browsers, and Lynx users may find the entry fields a bit more difficult to deal with. (Not to mention the fact that there are at least two different text-only interfaces.) Chapter six has suggested searches for a variety of topics: I found the list unhelpful, but novice users will probably find it to be a lot of fun. Chapter seven provides a history of the development of AltaVista. The trivia in my first paragraph comes from Appendix A, the thousand most common words on the Web. For anyone using (rather than merely surfing) the Web, this book is a valuable guide to an indispensable tool. For anyone else, there is still a lot of really interesting stuff. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996
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Book description:

This book explains how to use the AltaVista service. AltaVista is an Internet search tool that captures the full and complete text of over 2.5 million web pages per day, without exercising any filters that might eliminate important content. AltaVista allows users to conduct comprehensive file searches at speed of up to 100 times faster than other search engines. The book explains how to use this groundbreaking tool and demonstrates many of the applications that already have drawn millions of users to AltaVista.