__/ [efffemm@xxxxxx] on Thursday 05 January 2006 08:53 \__
> Before Overture took over Altavista, it had a NEAR search option,
> i.e. you could look for pages with one word near another, rather
> than just in the same document.
> I found it useful.
> Do any other search engines offer this now?
I think not, but proximity is accounted for when ranking results in most
search engines. If you were to search for "TERM1 TERM2" in a search engine,
allinttitle, allintext and the like would definitely play a role. However,
the closer together TERM1 and TERM2 are, the higher that factor will be in
term of its value.
I don't think you can change the weighting on the factor though, e.g. by
using keywords such as NEAR. I agree it was useful. Minuses and pluses seem
to have been dropped as well. Enclosing quotes rarely help either.
Punctuation is yet another deficiency.
Roy
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