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Feb 25: The Basics Fri Mar 3: Presentations
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Searching on the Web Important Things to Know About Searching the Web -- This has important information, review it again as needed while doing your research homework! There are several different methods of searching the web for information. 1. Search Engines. Examples include:
Search engines are huge databases of information about web pages. They only catalog about 10% of the web, however! Search engines work in a variety of different ways but all have "spiders" (little software programs) which read websites for keywords. How pages are ranked on those keywords is proprietary to each search engine. There are many sites devoted to improving search engine rankings. GoTo.com is a special search engine since advertisers pay for their rankings. They pay GoTo a certain amount each time someone clicks on the link from GoTo to the advertiser's site. GoTo claims this makes for excellent, relevant rankings -- but my experience is that depending on the keyword, results may not be relevant at all! In any case, you can see how much each subscriber is paying for the link in the search engine. Interestingly, these "paid listings" are causing quite a bit of commotion. Other search engines have picked up GoTo's results and used them as "top rankers" without labeling them as "paid advertisements", which is essentially what they are. A watchdog group, headed by Ralph Nader, as filed a petition with the Federal Trade Commission, stating that eight search engines violate Truth in Advertising rules because of this reason. Read more about it. 2. Meta-Search Engines. Examples include:
These are search engines of search engines! Meta search engines return the top few relevant results from a variety of search engines. In theory, these are fabulous tools for finding relevant results. In practice, they can be somewhat confusing. 3. Directories. Examples include:
Directories are browsable links, from the most broad to the most specific information on a topic. Generally speaking, directories have human editors who review each site individually for inclusion in each category. While this is extremely intense time-wise, it is thought that human editors can provide a more consistently relevant offering in a given area. This having been said, it is often difficult to browse a directory for specific information. However, they are a good place to start if you have no idea about anything about a certain topic and want a starting point in your search. Searching for Stuff on the Web Use this handy form from the UC Berkeley site for narrowing topic areas. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to view the file. Brainstorm your topic. Think of distinctive keyword phrases that will help you find information. For example, "actor" might not be that helpful a word, but "Mel Gibson" is much more specific. Go to one of the search engines and try some of your phrases. Depending on how much detail you want, you may try several search engines or many keywords. Don't forget that search results are often several pages long! Look further than the first page. Sometimes your answer is on the 4th or 5th page of results. Boolean Operators The Boolean operators (after mathematician George Boole, who described them) include AND, OR, and NOT. Read this article describing more about these operators. For example:
These terms can also be combined:
You will sometimes also see these operators presented as + and -. A search for +cookies +chocolate is similar to a search for cookies AND chocolate. Quotes Use quote marks when you're looking for a specific phrase. For example, in Google: "George Jones" -- turns up a country-western singer, a miniature donkey, and a painter You could narrow those results by looking for
Just as you can't believe everything you see on TV, you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. Anyone can publish just about anything on the Internet, at least in this country. Therefore, you can find extremist views, biased reporting, and unsubstantiated facts as well as good, legitimate information. Ways to identify how reliable an information source is:
Online PowerPoint presentation about identifying reliable sources. I showed this in class. Here's the page with the in-class exercise we did on evaluating web pages. |
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