What is the first tool that students (as well as just about everyone else) goes to for research? The Internet, of course! Millions of users visit Internet search engines (like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) to find information to answer simple questions like "Where is the nearest Thai restaurant" to more serious issues like "What are the best treatments for diabetes?"
What's interesting is that most people, although they rely on the Internet to such a great extent, do not know anything about how it actually works.
This section will provide information on how the web works and strategies that can be employed to use this type of search tool more effectively.
There are now over 1 billion websites on the Internet according to figures by online Internet tracker Live Stats! However, 75% of people never go beyond page one of their search results, which only provides 10-20 webpage results. So...how does Google determine which 20 of the billions of individual web pages to display?
URLs are web addresses that identify where a page is located on the Internet. Knowing the different parts of a URL can help you quickly tell some important information about a website. A good place to start is with the Top Level Domain (TLD), which is highlighted in the image below.
The two or three letter extention code signifies the type of institution or the country that is hosting the website. The main ones are:
Tip: Information coming from a .edu or .gov website is typically assumed to be more trustworthy since they are published by educational and government sources, which are the groups that sponsor a great deal of research being done on a wide variety of subjects.
Another strategy for searching smarter is to use any advanced search features available from the search engine you are using. Google offers a variety of advanced search techniques with features to better control your search parameters and get more refined results. For example, you can search for webpages by a specific domain (e.g. .edu or .gov), by a specific date range, by website region, along with many other filters.
Check out the document below to see many of the different ways in which can refine your Google search: