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OLD Review of HotBot

Last updated Sept. 25, 2002.
by Greg R.

HotBot, owned by Terra/Lycos, is one of older Web search engines. It uses the Inktomi database, along with Direct Hit and the the Open Directory. The basic search screen only shows a few options, but by choosing the Advanced Search the full range of search features is displayed. This review discusses the full set of options, some of which are only available in the Advanced Search. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review.

Databases: HotBot uses the Open Directory and both Direct Hit and Inktomi for its search engine databases. Direct Hit results display if the option for 10 results at a time is selected and there are 10 results available from Direct Hit. If an option for more than 10 results at a time is selected the Direct Hit results are available via a link. Other content comes from various advertisers, the Lycos Network, and Overture. The Overture and other advertiser results may show up above and/or below the other results but are under a separate heading such as "Sponsored Search Listings."

Strengths:
  * Advanced searching capabilities
  * Page depth limit
  * Advanced search help

Weaknesses: See also HotBot Inconsistencies page
  * Link searches must be exact
  * Can not uncluster results
  * Advanced features do not always work (truncation and depth now fail)

Default Operation:
Multiple search terms are processed as an AND operation by default.

Boolean Searching: HotBot offers full Boolean searching. After choosing 'Boolean phrase' from the drop down menu, HotBot supports Boolean searching with the operators AND, OR, and NOT. Searching can be nested using parentheses. Operators can be in lower or upper case, and symbols can be used: & for AND, | for OR, ! for NOT. HotBot can also use + for AND and - for NOT. It has a drop down menu choice for All the Words or Any of the Words. Also, in the Advanced Search, additional search boxes can be used to add additional terms or combining a phrase search with a Boolean search.

Proximity Searching: The drop down menu choice includes an option for a phrase search. Phrases can also be designated by enclosing the phrase in double quotes.

Truncation: In September 1998, HotBot introduced truncation with the * symbol. It can be end truncation, internal, or beginning. This is the only search engine that supports the wild card in all three positions. However, support has been inconsistent. The symbol used to have to be preceded by at least two characters. As of at least January 2000, it could be used anywhere, including at the very beginning of a search term. But by Fall 2000, the front trunctation was no longer working. In the Advanced Search, 'word stemming' also can be enabled. This is not truncation but rather a search for grammatical word variants including plural, singular, and tense. However, the truncation symbol cannot be used within a field search. Truncation was not working on HotBot from May 2001 for a few months, so if the results seem odd, check to see if it is working.

Case Sensitivity: HotBot and the other Inktomi databases are case sensitive. If search terms are entered in all lower case, all mixtures of upper and lower case are searched. If a search term contains one or more UPPER case letters, the search is limited to only records that exactly match the specified case.

Field Searching: HotBot offers a variety of field searching capabilities. The drop down menu includes option for searching title words and links to a specific URL. The latter must be a complete URL, and not just a portion of one. The title word search can also be entered in the query box by using the title:word syntax. Other field searches are possible using the designations listed below. HotBot used to have a FAQ on Advanced Search Features that gave the following list. Most of these are just the language behind the advanced search form. Note that all the date field searches will only work when used in a Boolean phrase without any + or - symbols.

Limits: In the fully expanded form, there are a number of limit options available. Date limits can be designated after or before a specific date, or they can be entered as within the last X number of years, months, or days (where X is a user entered number). The date is determined by the date the page was last modified at the time the HotBot spider last visited the page. If that date is unavailable, HotBot uses the date it was last added to the database. A new limit in September 1998 is the language limit, which allows the searcher to limit results to those with words from one of several languages (Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish). HotBot searches can also be limited to records that contain a specific Media Type, such as Acrobat, Shockwave, VRML, or Audio. There is even an option for user-defined media types. Lastly, searches can be limited by location/domain. HotBot has a limit for entering a specific host or domain name as well as a limit by continent (based on domain).

Unique:One unique limit is the Page Type limit, introduced in 1997. This can be either the default Any, Top Page, or a user specified Page Depth. Choosing the Top Page option limits the results to the central page on a Web site (i.e. http://www.name.edu/). Page Depth requires a number, with the default of 3, that will limit how far down a subdirectory hierarchy HotBot will display results. The Top Page limit can be very useful for identifying a primary site for an organization or topic. A new Page Depth limit added in September 1998 is the Personal Page limit, which refers less to the depth of the page than to the structure of the URL which identifies a page as a personal page. In Sept. 2002, the page depth feature no longer worked.

Stop Words: HotBot and the other Inktomi databases have an extensive, dynamic stop word list. Many common words and numbers will not be searched.

Sorting: Results are sorted by relevance with groupings by site available at the end of each brief record. It does not identify which hits have more than one page per site available. Instead, every hit has the See results from this site only whether or not there is only a single hit from that site. There are no further options for sorting alphabetically or by date. In July 2000, HotBot introduced a "Disable 'Best Page Only' Filter" on the advanced search page which unclusters results. This feature rarely works properly and is not working as of Sept. 2002.

Display:
The display includes the relevance score, title, URL, a brief extract, and date. HotBot displays 10 records at a time, by default. However, users can request displays of 10, 25, 50, 75, or 100 records at a time. More search engines should give such options. To always go directly to Advanced Search with the default of 100 records and the 'Boolean phrase' option, make a bookmark to these Advanced Search settings, or use their personalization feature.

Documentation:
Help Files
Press Releases (some may be found here).