AllTheWeb.com Lives Up To Its Name

By: Charles Bowen A few years ago, someone told me about a new search engine called AllTheWeb.com. Hearing that, I remember thinking, "Great name!" However, when I reviewed the site for a possible report in this column, I was disappointed with the actual implementation. I went away wondering, "Hmmmm. Was 'RandomHunksofTheWeb.com' already taken?" (It's hard to believe, I know, but I was a smart aleck like that in my younger days.)

Anyway, time passes and not long ago, a friend who loves search engines even more than I do told me I should take a fresh look at AllTheWeb.com. "They've fixed it," he assured me. And, wow, is he ever right! AllTheWeb has been mightily improved with:

* Multiple results ranking methodologies.
* Advanced link analysis.
* Searchable pictures, videos, MP3, even FTP sites.
* Alternative language support.
* A Mobile Search service to search more than 20 million wireless Web pages.
* And improved filtering so that fewer searches produce links to content that some might deem offensive.

Best of all, the user interface is greatly upgraded. It now is so fast, it is hard to believe the search engine has indexed more than 625 million full-text pages through 1.6 billion URLs in 46 different languages.

To check it out for yourself, visit the site at http://www.alltheweb.com, where a beautifully concise introductory page invites a search term. Check the adjacent "Exact phrase" box if you want to limit the search to a precise string of words, then click the Search button. You can use Boolean operators to broaden or narrow the search. Use the plus sign (+) as "AND" and the minus sign (-) for "OR."

Note if you want pages only in a specific language (from Afrikaans to Welsh), click on the drop-down menu to the left of the data entry box and select a language from the list. This will return only those pages detected as written in the specified language and give you more relevant links.

The search engine defaults to searching for Web pages, but you can re-set it to direct the search toward other types of online content. Below the data entry box are links that can be clicked if you want to search for pictures, videos, MP3 sound files, or downloadable FTP site files. Each result is listed with the title of the page, a text excerpt that describes the page, and the URL.

A "More hits from" link with each result can be clicked to cause the search engine to perform a new search with the same query, but only within the current site. This allows you to get search results from a specific site. By default, 10 search results are listed on each page. Navigation links at the bottom of each section help you move through multiple pages of results.

Other considerations for using AllTheWeb.com in your research, writing, and editing:

1. A Customize link at the top of most pages in the search engine enables you to personalize many of AllTheWeb's settings, including how the "offensive content reduction" filter works, how results are displayed, language settings, and so on.

2. Click the "Help" link at the top of the main screen for guidance on more detailed searching. AllTheWeb provides logical operators and nesting options for search queries. It also offers a number of specialized keywords. For instance, if you want to find pages that are linked to a specific URL, you can enter "link.all:" followed by the target Web address, as in "link.all:www.bowenbooks.com." Similarly, you can find pages with a specific word or phrase in the URL with the "url.all:" keyword, as in "url.all:baseball."

3. If you are doing detailed research, you will want to explore the site's word filters. This feature, described in the "Advanced Search" section (reached with a link at the top of the main screen), allows you to determine precisely which words should be included or excluded in a search. You also can filter specific domain or specific Web sites. Settings made in the Advance Search also can be saved for use in future research.