Cow9's Standard View

1. Enter your search term or terms, from either the Simple or Advanced Search screens, and click Refine. You'll see Refine's List View, which lists topics in order of their likely relevance to your initial search.
2. Specify whether to Require or Exclude a topic from the drop-down menus provided with each topic. You don't have to do this for each topic--just the ones you specifically want to require or exclude.
3. Click either Search or Refine:
   • Clicking Search submits the refined search based on the Require or Exclude settings you specified.
   • Clicking Refine generates a new Refine list, based on the Require or Exclude settings you specified, that lets you further refine the search before you submit it. You can continue to refine the search as many times as you want. Just click Search when you're ready.

After you resubmit a search, the results screen appears, displaying your original query along with a line below the query box indicating that Refine selections are in effect.

• To clear your Refine selections and return to the original query, click in the Refined by checkbox to remove the check mark, and click Submit again.
• To further refine your search, click Refine to return to the Refine screen.

Cow9's Java View

1. Enter your search term or terms, from either the Simple or Advanced Search screens, and submit the query.
2. When AltaVista displays the results list, click Refine. You'll see Refine's List View screen.
3. Click Graph View. A map of expandable topics appears. The yellow bars to the right of each word in a topic indicate the probable relevance of that word to your search. The more yellow bars, the more relevant a word is likely to be.
4. Require or Exclude entire topics or just specific words within the topic:
   • Move your cursor over a topic to display all of the words in the group.
   • Click once in the checkbox next to a topic or word to require it in search results (a green check mark appears). Click twice in a checkbox to exclude a word (a red X appears).
   • Undo a Require or Exclude selection by clicking on the checkbox until it becomes blank.
   • Spread the topic boxes out a bit by clicking a topic, dragging it to a new location, and releasing the mouse button.
5. Click either Search or Refine:
   • Clicking Search submits the refined search based on the Require or Exclude settings you specified.
   • Clicking Refine generates a new Refine list, based on the Require or Exclude settings you specified, that lets you further refine the search before you submit it. You can continue to refine the search as many times as you want. Just click Search when you're ready.

After you resubmit a search, the results screen appears, displaying your original query along with a line below the query box indicating that Refine selections are in effect.

• To clear your Refine selections and return to the original query, click the Refined by checkbox in the search form to remove the check mark, and click Submit again.
• To further refine your search, click Refine to return to the Refine screen.

Tip! You can make Graph View your Refine default! Just click Preferences on the main AltaVista page and follow the instructions.