Search Syntax: Fielded Search

A good way to narrow a search is to look for your search term in a particular field: the title of a document, the URL, domain, or date. The search engines that support fielded searches are AltaVista, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos (Advanced Search), and Northern Light.

Title: If you are searching for information about "sheet metal stamping," the chances are better that pages with stamping in the title will provide more in-depth treatment than if the phrase merely occurs somewhere on the page. Be careful to use synonyms, as the author may have used different words for the same subject or different spellings.

Hotbot and Lycos let you use forms input to search in title. AltaVista, Infoseek, and Northern Light use title:your word. For example, title:stamping or title:"metal stamping."

URL: Universal Resource Locator (URL) is another useful field to search. Looking for a company or association? Search for the name as part of the URL. The format is usually url:xxxx. For example, url:asm. You might look for url:robotics to find pages that have robotics in the host name or part of the filename or directory path.

Domain is sometines used instead of URL. It applies generally to the top level domain (.com, .org, .edu, .gov, .ca, .uk). This is useful in searching for educational or government sites. For example, domain:.edu or domain:.gov.