Searching the Web

Volume 30, Number 2, December 2002

Field Searching

Holly Gunn

Web pages are comprised of various sections. These sections of a web site are called fields. The most common web site fields are title, image, URL, link and text. Some search engines allow you to restrict your searches to particular fields. Searching in a field enables more precise searching.

Read the search engine help screens to determine the field searching capabilities and search syntax for each particular engine.

Try these field searches with Google

intitle:"teacher-librarian"
intitle:plagiarism
allintitle:“Animal Farm” criticism

With Google, the search command intitle: searches for a single word or phrase (in quotation marks) in the title field of the HTML code. The search syntax allintitle: searches for multiple words anywhere in the title field.

Google uses the search term link: to search within the link field of web pages and find out who has linked to your site:

link:www.teacherlibrarian.com

Google uses the search syntax inurl: to search for a specific word or combination of letters anywhere within URLs:

inurl:cbc
inurl:nbc

Try these field searches with AltaVista

The search syntax for field searches is slightly different with AltaVista.

AltaVista uses title: to search the title field:

title:"teacher librarian"

That search looks for the phrase teacher librarian in the title field of Web pages.

To find out who has linked to your site, use the syntax link: as in,

link:www.teacherlibrarian.com

This search tells you who has linked to www.teacherlibrarian.com.

Different field searches can be combined. For example, this search with AltaVista will locate an image of the md-11 with some text:

image:md-11 text:md-11

The following search with Google will locate Australian web sites with the phrase “teacher librarian” in the title field:

intitle:“teacher librarian” inurl:au

Note: Spacing and capitalization matter. There is no space after image: or intitle: and these search terms must be typed in lower-case.

Online lessons

The following online guides will help you and your students hone field searching skills:

Bare Bone 101: Lesson 9: Field Searching

Pandia Field Searching Lesson 11

Holly Gunn is the teacher-librarian at Sackville High School, Nova Scotia. She can be reached at hgunn@accesscable.net.