The Search Results Display
Search results are displayed in different sections depending on where the results are obtained from:

• Most popular related searches: A listing of the most popular search terms that matches part or all of your search term. These suggested search terms are intended to help refine your search results. Clicking on one of these links generates a new search with the selected search term.
• Partner Search Results: Paid listings provided by Overture.
• Netscape Recommends: Includes official Web sites and links to tools, services and premium content within Netscape.com and the AOL Time Warner network of Web properties that most closely match your search term.
• Reviewed Web Sites: Web sites listed in the Open Directory Project that most closely match your search term. These Web sites have been reviewed and categorized by a team of about 40,000 editors around the world.
• Web Site Categories: Topically organized Web site categories in the Open Directory Project related to your search term.
• Google Results: Matching Web sites contained within Google's automatically indexed database of Web sites.

How to Search
To perform a search, simply enter the term or terms you are searching for and click on the "Search" button. For example, a search on

horoscopes

will return sites that contain the word "horoscopes" somewhere in the site's title, description, URL or in the body of the page. Searches with multiple terms are automatically treated as if an and had been inserted between all the terms unless another operator had been used. (More about operators below.) This causes only sites containing all of the search words in them to be returned. It is not necessary for these words to be found next to each other. For example, a search on

golf clubs

will return sites that contain both "golf" and "clubs" somewhere within the site's title, description, URL or in the body of the page. Sites focused on "tennis clubs" may be returned if the site also contains the word "golf." Similarly, a site focused on "golf balls" will not be returned if it does not contain the word "clubs."

Word Stemming
Many times, the search term you choose is the root of other words. For example, the word "test" is the root of "tests", "tested", "tester", "testers" and "testing." By default, word stemming is on. That is, a search of the word "test" will return any site that contains the word "test" and any other word that contains "test" in its root. You can turn word stemming off by inserting a single quotation mark at the end of the search term. For example, if you wanted to perform a search of the word "test" and do not want any other form of the word, you would search on

test'

This will eliminate any sites that did not match "test" exactly.

Phrase Search
Sometimes the order of the search terms matters. Using phrase searching can greatly reduce the number of sites that are matched by a search. To force multiple words to be treated as a phrase, enclose the search terms with double quotation marks. For example, if you searched for

"Tour de France"

you would get only those sites containing all three words "tour", "de", and "France" - in that order.

Fuzzy Searching
This is useful when you are not sure how to spell your search term. For example, if you wanted to search on the word

amoxycillin

but you didn't know the correct spelling, you could use the fuzzy search operator. To do this, type in as much of the word you know how to spell followed by a tilde (~) followed by your best guess at how the rest of the word is spelled. For example,

amoxy~cilan

will return sites containing your version, the correct version and any other versions the search engine finds.

Wild Card Characters
Like fuzzy searching, wild card characters are useful when you're not sure of how your search term is spelled. Wild card characters can offer additional control and flexibility. These characters act as placeholders for one or more characters in a search term. Search terms with a wild card character in the first character position will be treated as illegal queries. Additionally, you should avoid the use of wild card characters in any of the first three character positions due to the time required to perform these types of searches. There are three important wild card characters to be aware of: the dollar sign ($), the question mark (?) and the asterisk (*).

The dollar sign ($) is an optional single character wild card operator. For example,

colo$r

will match "color" and "colour"

The question mark (?) is a required single character wild card operator. For example,

medic???

will match "medicate" and "medicine" but not "medications"

colo?r

will match "colour" but not "color"

The asterisk (*) is an optional multi-character wild card operator. For example,

medica*

will match "medicate" and "medical" but not "medicine"

Boolean Operators
Boolean operators are another powerful tool to help be very specific about what you are looking for as well as what you are not looking for. There are three important Boolean operators to be aware of: AND, OR and NOT. (Words are capitalized for emphasis only. Netscape Search is not case sensitive.) As mentioned above, AND is the default operator for multiple word search terms. AND forces both words on either side of the operator to be found in the search. If one or both are not found, then the site is not considered a matching site. The search term

Britney Spears

is actually treated as

Britney AND Spears

Sites that contain "Britney" and "Spears" are considered matches.

The OR operator causes the search engine to check for the existence of the search terms on either side of the OR operator. If you were shopping for a motorcycle but couldn't decide between a Kawasaki or a Suzuki, your search term might be:

Kawasaki OR Suzuki

Sites that contain either "Kawasaki" or "Suzuki" will be considered matches.

The NOT operator causes the search engine to eliminate sites based on the existence of the search term following the NOT operator. For example, if you were searching for sites that dealt with chemicals but weren't interested in sites that dealt with chemical addiction, your search term might be:

chemical$ NOT addict$$$

Here, the concept of creating complex searches is also introduced. A complex search combines wild cards with Boolean operators. Sites that contain either "chemical" or "chemicals" will be used to build the list of matching sites. Then any site in the set of matching sites that contains the words "addict", "addicted", "addiction" or "addicting" will be removed from the set of matching sites.

Netscape Search does not support shorthand operators such "+" (shorthand for AND) and "-" (shorthand for NOT)

Parentheses
Parentheses allow you to nest operators. For example, the following search term is used to find Web sites that contain images of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh or Pierre-Auguste Renoir. This could be handled with the following query:

("Vincent Van Gogh" OR "Pierre-Auguste Renoir") AND images

This search is identical to the following:

("Vincent Van Gogh" AND images) OR ("Pierre-Auguste Renoir" AND images)

Important Note
The more special operators used in a search term, the longer it will take for the search engine to construct the list of matching sites. In general, users find that obtaining higher quality results slowly is preferable to obtaining lower quality results quickly.

For more tips on searching the Internet, see our General Tips section.