different listings in Web Pages and Advanced Web Pages

Altavista give different listings for the same query on the

[angiolo]

I noticed that the listings from Altavista is quite different if you try a search in the standard Altavista or in the advanced one.

for example searching for:

battery operated cars

[altavista.com...]

[altavista.com...]

you get completely different results.

Why?

Do you know which one of the two possibilites are more used from users?

Sincerely,

Angiolo

[seth_wilde]

"Why?"

The only difference is that they're using two different methods to sort the results. The standard search uses a "simple syntax" while the advanced search uses "Boolean logic". They're pretty similiar methods if you don't use any modifiers but they do have differences (ex - the standard search automatically ranks pages higher if your search terms appear on the page within ten words of each other, while for the same feature using advance you would need to incluce "near" in the search box)

"Do you know which one of the two possibilites are more used from users?"

The standard search is much more commonly used...

[angiolo]

thank you for the answer, but I am still a little bit confused.

It seems to me that if I do the same search on the advanced search, without any qualificator, the keyword in the title or at the beginning of the body are not so important.

Using the qualificator NEAR on both the search (simple and advanced) give me different results.

For example doing this search in the simple and advanced search:

italian language school

(without any qualificators)

You can easily note that except for the first listing, there are a lot of pages of only one school that have the keywords only in the META TAGS (Keywords).

It seems that to be found in the advanced search you need to have the targeted keyword only in the META TAGS.

Angiolo

[seth_wilde]

I guess I'm not exactly sure what your asking. I was just commenting on the differences between the simple and advanced search. The simple search uses some modifiers as a default (such as NEAR) where as with the advanced you need to actually select these.

I don't think the "italian language school" example for the advanced search is an accurate representation of it's relevancy because the advanced search is not designed to be used without modifiers

[angiolo]

Hi Seth_wilde!

Thank you for your time.

I apologize for annoying you! Maybe my english is not sufficient good to explain what I mean.

I tried several searches on Altavista:

a simple search:

1)
italian language school

an another search using the advanced search page

2)
italian language school

3)
italian near language near school

The results of these searches are very different and it seems (to me) that using the advanced search you have old (updated) information.

For example using the third search, with qualificators:

[altavista.com...]

The first 4 results are so old that they do not work at all.

We know how visitors reach us, but we do not how they could reach us as well.
For example some gurus suggest to have mispelled words in the meta or door pages for mispelled words.

I was curios about the possibility that some visitors could use the advanced feature in Altavista in the same way they use the standard feature.

Sincerely,

Angiolo

[seth_wilde]

"I apologize for annoying you!"

Don't worry angiolo, you weren't annoying me, I just didn't fully understand the question.

"I was curios about the possibility that some visitors could use the advanced feature in Altavista in the same way they use the standard feature."

Overall I wouldn't worry about optimizing for advanced search. Most people don't use it and those that do tend use a process of constantly refining their modifiers/dates etc. until the pages they find relevant float to the top...