untangling_the_web

DOCID: 4046925
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Yahoo recognizes double-quotes as enclosing a phrase.
Yahoo does not have any stop words, i.e., commonplace words. In fact, you can
search on any single letter or number.
It is unnecessary to use the plus sign (+) with any terms because by default Yahoo
searches for all keywords. However, there are many times when searchers need to
exclude certain terms that are commonly associated with a keyword but irrelevant to
their search. That's where the minus sign (-) comes in. Using the minus sign in front
of a keyword ensures that Yahoo excludes that term from the search. For example,
the results for the search ["pearl harbor" -movie] are very different from the results
for ["pearl harbor"].
Yahoo will search for the ampersand [&]. Yahoo will search for [barnes&noble], but
if you insert spaces-[barnes & noble]-Yahoo ignores the ampersand. Also, while
Yahoo will not actually search on a plus sign, the search engine will search for [c+]
and [c++], although it does not recognize the difference between one and two
pluses.
Yahoo Advanced Search
Yahoo has many advanced search features that can be accessed from the
Advanced Search page or, in many cases, employed in the simple search screen by
using the correct syntax.
Yahoo has incorporated from AlitheWeb and AltaVista most of the languages in
which users may search; like its predecessors, Yahoo is superb at searching for
non-English and non-Latin languages. Using either the language preference settings
or the advanced search page, users can select from over 35 languages and
encodings in which to search and see results.
Keep in mind that if you search on a word using diacritical marks such as accents or
umlauts, Yahoo will only search for terms matching those with the diacritic.
However, if you search for the unaccented term, Yahoo will find the term with and
without the diacritic. For example, a search on [facade] will not return pages
containing only the term teceoe, but a search on [facade] will find both facade and
far;ade.
Yahoo offers many "search meta words," i.e., special search terms to restrict
searches and make them more effective. These special operators can be used in
both simple and advanced search.
~ site/domain: restricts results to a specific website or domain, including a
specific top-level domain. May be used with or without keywords.
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