The table shows some of the features and techniques for the most common general Web search services to show how to use them and to help decide which may be the most appropriate. Each service also provides more detailed instructions. Note that some features will be available under an 'advanced', 'power' or other further search option.

	Alta Vista	Excite	FAST	Google	Hotbot	Infoseek (Go.com)	Lycos	Northern Light
Other sources	Usenet, sounds, pictures	Usenet, news, email addresses	Multimedia (from Lycos)	None	Usenet, sounds, pictures	Usenet, email addresses, news, pictures	Sounds, pictures	Journal articles
Implied OR, AND	Implied OR	Implied OR	Implied AND	AND	Implied AND	Implied OR	Implied AND	Implied AND
+ or -	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
AND, OR, NOT	In Advanced Search	Yes	From menu	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Fields	Title, URL, text, etc. Uses title:	No	Title, domain, language Uses title: and from menu	No	Title, domain, etc. Uses title: or from menu	Title, URL, etc. Uses title: or from menu	URL, title, text, etc. Uses title: or from menu	Title, text, URL etc. Uses title: or from menu
Truncation	Uses *	No	No	No	Uses *	No	No	Uses *
Adjacency (phrase)	Uses " "	Uses " "	From menu	Uses " "	Uses " " or from menu	Uses " "	Uses " " or from menu	Uses " "
Proximity	Uses NEAR	No	No	No	No	No	Uses NEAR or from menu	No

Other sources. The service may search Internet sources other than World Wide Web pages: most commonly the message archives of Usenet newsgroups. Many also link to services providing e-mail address directories, company information and so on and may have a directory of Internet resources arranged by subject.

Implied OR, AND. Search words will be automatically OR'd together to look for pages with any of the words or AND'd to look for pages containing all of them. 

+ and -. Terms that must be present can be prefixed with + (require). Those not required can be indicated with - (reject).

AND, OR, NOT. Terms can be linked with AND to show all words must be present, eg White AND House; with OR to look for synonyms, eg football OR soccer; and NOT to exclude words. Some services have options, such as 'any words', 'all these words' which have the same purpose.

Fields. It may be possible to search, for example, just the document title or the URL. The format usually is to prefix the search term with title: or URL: or whatever.

Truncation. The system may be able to search for a number of words beginning with the same stem, eg medic* would find medical and medicine.

Adjacency. Specify that words must be next to each other, as in a phrase or person's name.

Proximity. Ensure that search words are near each other, say, in the same sentence.