To assist you with searching through this web-site, here are a few examples to facilitate useful searches. Please note these rules are based on Altavista's query syntax: a look at their search help might prove helpful.
| Search term | Description |
| visual basic | This would return a list of documents that contain either visual or basic or both words, in any order. |
| "visual basic" | Returns a list of documents that contain the phrase visual basic exactly as quoted. |
| Visual Basic | Using capital letters forces an exact case match to occur, thus returning documents containing Visual or Basic, but not those containing visual or basic. |
| visual AND basic | This will only return details of documents that contain all the specifed words (matched in any order). |
| visual +basic | Same as above, the plus (+) sign is a direct alternative for AND. |
| visual NOT basic | This would return a list of documents that contain the word visual but do not contain the word basic. |
| visual -basic | Same as above, the minus (-) sign is a direct alternative for NOT. |
| $sic | The dollar sign is used to compare letters instead of words: this would return matches to both basic and sickness. |
| visual +basic -"visual basic" | This expression would return all documents containing both the words basic and visual, EXCEPT for documents containing the phrase visual basic. |