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NNPDF Links to Other Resources
Yahoo! Health related search engine
Alta Vista search engine
Google search engine

General Tips on Searching

There are a number of general search engines (Yahoo, Lycos, WebCrawler, HotBot, InfoSeek, Excite, etc) and they all have different ways of searching, different ways of limiting searches, and different sites included in the index. To find the right way to limit your search for a particular engine, look for Tips or Help. Some of the more common techniques are listed below.

Search engines use two basic methods to index the contents of sites:

( 1 ) - index critical words (mainly nouns) throughout the site.
( 2 ) - index only the keywords defined by the site's webmaster (which you don't normally see).

All of this is automated and ultimately depends how the webmaster of each site writes the content and keywords. In other words, Janet spells "potato" and Doug spells "potatoe" and you have to search for both.
Search engines look for each of the words that you enter.
Enter [Niemann Pick] and you get any site using either word - Niemann or Pick. There are a lot of sites that use the word pick!

Use a plus sign to require that the word be found.
Enter [+Niemann +Pick] and sites using both words are listed first. The two words do not have to be together.

Use quotes to search for an exact word or phrase.
Enter ["Niemann Pick"] and both words must be found spelled exactly like that. You won't get sites containing Niemann-Pick (with a hyphen), Niemann Pic (without the K), etc.

Search engines don't care whether you capitalize or not.
[PICK] is the same as entering [pick].
In some search engines, mixing uppercase with lowercase [Pick] acts like quotes ["Pick"].

Search for plurals of a word.
[+rare +disease] and [+rare +diseases] have different results.

Use the word "NEAR" to require that two words be close to each other in the text.
Enter [Niemann NEAR Pick] and the two words must be in the same sentence. This is one type of Boolian search.

Use a minus sign (or the word "NOT") to exclude certain words.
Enter [+support NOT lingerie] to eliminate sites that sell support hose.

Begin with a general search and use the results to decide what words to add or eliminate.

Think of other ways to describe what you are trying to find.
[treatment] and ["medical advice"] provide different results but the meaning is similar.

Try a different search engine. Not only do they have different ways of searching, but not all sites are listed on all search engines. The NNPDF site is listed with Alta Vista, Excite, Hot Bot, InfoSeek, Lycos, Webcrawler, and Yahoo! but there are another 240 or so search engines that we haven't submitted listings to.
Combine these techniques to tailor your search and get better results faster.

For example, enter [+children +toys +disability disabilities -goodwill] to look for sites that sell toys for children with disabilities but exclude Goodwill Industries (which employees people with disabilities and sells toys to children). We tested this search on March 6, 1998.

.....Hot Bot found 1,985 pages. The top rated pages were mainly articles in online magazines.
.....Yahoo! found 3 sites including a toy catalog, a toy store, and a toy library.
.....Alta Vista found 3,297 pages. The top rated pages were about "disabilities" not "toys".

Some of the Keywords Used for this Site

childhood disease, childhood diseases, cholesterol storage, enlarged liver, enlarged spleen, eye movement, genetic disease, genetic diseases, jaundice, learning problems, medical research funding, motor skills, neurological, Neimann-Pick, Niemann Pic, Niemann-Pick, Niemann Pick, Nieman, Neiman, rare disease, rare diseases, slurred speech, symptoms, Type A, Type B, Type C, vertical eye movement