November 2003 ~ Online Magazine ~ p.14 ~ "Internet Search Engine Update"

AlltheWeb.com
- has expanded the number of file types in its indexes
- covers PDF, Microsoft Word, Flash Files, Rich Text Format, Power Point, Excel, PostScript, Word Perfect, and StarOffice
- to limit search to these file types, use the "filetype:" command followed by name of file format
- major size increase from 2.1billion to 3.2billion

AltaVista.com
- has new toolbar

Gigablast.com
- full Boolean searching, indexing of multiple file types, and meta tags
- operators AND, OR, AND NOT should be in uppercase
- use command "type:" followed by file format to limit
- has introduced metatags including zip code, city, state, country, author, language, and classification

Google.com
- the tilde (~) for synonyms, placed immediately before a search term, with no space…uses some of the technology behind Google Sets experiment
- "Search by Location"- http://labs.google.com/location - It includes a map of locations and highlighting of addresses, but there is no cache link, and its matches for locations may appear at odd places in the results

Google Dance
- sept/oct 2003, Google significantly changed its update cycle
- in the summer of 2003, the update changed from a huge complete update occurring once/month or so to a more incremental approach
- Google seems to have a wider range b/w older and newer sites, and it is no longer clear how often the records will be updated.

HotBot
- Inktomi is now just "HotBot"
- Fast is now called "Lycos"
- Teoma is "AskJeeves"

Shopping.com
- gives narrowing options for price, brand, and product-specific features