---
name: "WWW::Search::HotBot"
section: "3pm"
platform: "linux"
package: "libwww-search-perl"
version: "2.46-1"
release: "Debian 5.0 (Lenny)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/WWW::Search::HotBot"
---

# WWW::Search::HotBot(3pm)

WWW::Search::HotBot - backend for searching hotbot.lycos.com

```
  use WWW::Search;
  my $oSearch = new WWW::Search('HotBot');
  my $sQuery = WWW::Search::escape_query("+sushi restaurant +Columbus Ohio");
  $oSearch->native_query($sQuery);
  while (my $oResult = $oSearch->next_result())
    { print $oResult->url, "\n"; }
```

This class is a HotBot specialization of WWW::Search.
 It handles making and interpreting HotBot searches
 *http://www.hotbot.com* via the Inktomi index.
 This class exports no public interface; all interaction should
 be done through WWW::Search objects.
 To make new back-ends, see WWW::Search.
 Please tell the author if you find any!
 As of 1998-02-02, `"WWW::Search::HotBot"` is maintained by Martin Thurn
 (mthurn@cpan.org).
 `"WWW::Search::HotBot"` was originally written by Wm. L. Scheding,
 based on `"WWW::Search::AltaVista"`.
 THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
 WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
 MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
 If it is not listed here, then it was not a meaningful nor released revision.
\
 **2.28, 2003-02-20** MAJOR overhaul for new www.hotbot.com
\
 **2.27, 2002-07-11** FIX for mangled "sponsored links" (by ignoring them!)
\
 **2.25, 2001-12-17** FIX for new URL output format with date; delete unused code; get next page of results
\
 **2.24, 2001-10** Massive re-write using new website parameters and HTML::TreeBuilder
\
 **2.23, 2001-07-19** Tweak pattern for result-count; set agent\_name to something that works
\
 **2.21, 2000-12-11** new URL for advanced search
\
 **2.19, 2000-10-11** added AM1=MC to all URLs in GUI mode (hotbot.com seems to "randomly"
 add this if you search manually at their site)
\
 **2.18, 2000-06-26** fix for only one page of gui results; and "next" link in new place
\
 **2.17, 2000-05-24** was still missing first URL of non-gui(?) results!
\
 **2.16, 2000-05-17** was missing first URL of gui results
\
 **2.15, 2000-04-03** fixed *gui\_query()*
\
 **2.14, 2000-02-01** testing now uses WWW::Search::Test module
\
 **2.13, 2000-01-31** bugfix: was missing title
\
 **2.12, 2000-01-19** new function *gui\_query()*, and handle output from it
\
 **2.10, 1999-12-22** handle new result format
\
 **2.09, 1999-12-15** handle new result count format
\
 **2.08, 1999-12-10** handle new output format
\
 **2.07, 1999-11-12** BUGFIX for domain-limited URL parsing (thanks to Leon Brocard)
\
 **2.06, 1999-10-18** www.hotbot.com changed their output format slightly;
 now uses *strip\_tags()* on title and description
\
 **2.05, 1999-10-05** now uses *hash\_to\_cgi\_string()*; new test cases
\
 **2.03, 1999-09-28** BUGFIX: was missing the "Next page" link sometimes.
\
 **2.02, 1999-08-17** Now is able to parse "URL-only" format (i.e. {'DE' =\> 0}) and "brief
 description" format (i.e. {'DE' =\> 1}) if the user so desires.
\
 **1.34, 1999-07-01** New test cases.
\
 **1.32, 1999-06-20** Now unescapes the URLs before returning them.
\
 **1.31, 1999-06-11** www.hotbot.com changed their output format ever so slightly.  (Thanks
 to Jim jsmyser at bigfoot.com for pointing it out)
\
 **1.30, 1999-04-12** BUG FIX: results for domain-limited search were not parsed.  (Thanks to
 Christopher York yorkc at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu for pointing it out)
\
 **1.29, 1999-02-22** www.hotbot.com changed their output format.  (Thanks to Tim Chklovski
 timc at mit.edu for pointing it out)
\
 **1.27, 1998-11-06** HotBot changed their output format(?).
 HotBot.pm now uses hotbot.com's text-only search results format.
 Minor documentation changes.
\
 **1.25, 1998-09-11** HotBot changed their output format ever so slightly.
 Documentation added for all known HotBot query options!
\
 **1.23** Better documentation for boolean queries.  (Thanks to Jason Titus jason\_titus at odsnet.com)
\
 **1.22** www.hotbot.com changed their output format.
\
 **1.21** www.hotbot.com changed their output format.
\
 **1.17** www.hotbot.com changed their search script location and output format on 1998-05-21.
 Also, as many as 6 fields of each SearchResult are now filled in.
\
 **1.13** Fixed the maximum\_to\_retrieve off-by-one problem.
 Updated test cases.
\
 **1.12** www.hotbot.com does not do truncation. Therefore, if the query
 contains truncation characters (i.e. '\*' at end of words), they are
 simply deleted before the query is sent to www.hotbot.com.
\
 **1.11, 1998-02-05** Fixed and revamped by Martin Thurn.