AltaVista Defaults to AND

AltaVista has changed the default operation on their simple search yet again. They have now joined all the other major search engines by defaulting to AND when two or more words in their Basic Search, usually. It is still not always a straight AND. I found some searches that would still do an OR, most often when a straight AND would result in zero results or very few results. As an AltaVista representative put it, "We start with AND, and will OR the terms if this is necessary to get a useful results set, but prefer to stick with AND if there are enough results." To be sure that AltaVista does an AND, it is still safest to use the Boolean operator directly. Search Engine Feature Chart, Search Engines by Feature Page, and the AltaVista Review have all been updated.

Also, on the AltaVista Power Search, or Search Assistant page, there is now a message stating that "Beginning February 21, 2002, AltaVista Search Assistant features will be incorporated into AltaVista Advanced Search."