Web Searching Overview

Primer | Get Started | Check Quality | Advertising

Web Search Primer

Finding information on the Internet is made easier through the use of search engines and subject directories. These were introduced in the Research Starter Kit, and are explored in greater detail in this section.

Search engines are the work horses -- they find web pages that have the words you are searching for. Google is the most popular search engine.

The leading search engines offer an abundance of search tools for searching news, images, video, maps. These are called verticals. Google has several of these.

Some search engines are "natural language" search engines - they try to understand your question and to find content that matches on meaning rather than strictly word matches. Hakia is one to try.

Meta searchers search the searchers. A metasearch engine like AllPlus will search several search engines at one time to deliver a sweep of results.

Subject directories are the subject catalogues of the Internet -- they organize Web sites and other resources by subject. The best subject directories are those maintained by librarians such as the Internet Public Library at Drexel University in the United States.

There are also meta-directories such as Pandia PowerSearch where specialized search engines (also called vertical search engines) are grouped by their specialty - art, music, people finders etc.

There are many of these specialized search engines. YouTube, as an example, is only for video.

There are also portals that are only about health, or travel, or other topic. These often have a vertical search engine which will crawl specially selected databases and websites. Healthline is an example.

Social Search is a new approach by which people share their findings and opinions and tap into their networks to get answers. The social bookmarking services like delicious where people keep their bookmarks online are the new subject guides.

Real-Time Search taps into the stream of short messages posted to Twitter about anything and everything. There are several search tools but it's best to start with Search Twitter.

Get Started

Most search questions are best answered by a combination of browsing subject lists and searching for specific search terms. This can be likened to using both the table of contents (the subject list) and the index to a book (the key words).

Typically, when the information you seek is general in nature, such as travel or astronomy or cancer, use a search tool that will help you get a big picture. Kosmix is a good search tool for getting an overview. A subject directory can also help to find sites on a topic.

However, when you are looking for something quite specific - the name of a place or person, title of a song, information on a specific drug, or anything else that is unique - use a search engine to find pages where those words have been used.

Often the best bet is to find a site that is all about your topic - all about recipes (epicurious.com), or all about Canadian Legislation (CanLII.org). You will find these at a general subject directory such as Yahoo! or Open Directory Project or Librarians' Internet Index.

If you think other people might have bookmarked articles and sites you might check one of the social-search sites.

Check Quality

Finding Internet sites is just the beginning. Determining their relevance to your immediate information need is the next step. Look over the front page to get a general idea of what the web site is about and who owns it. Most sites will have an About page, Company Information, or possibly something under Press.

Assess the credibility of the source. There are numerous examples of incorrect data at web sites. Since anyone can publish online, what you find may be badly written; or worse, wrong.

Validate. Check for the date of the document and the author.

1. Evaluate the credentials of the person or organization responsible for the site. Look for the About page. What biographical information is there? Is the organization reputable? Do others link to this site? Often a simple search on the person or organization at a search engine can help validate your find.
   
   
2. Ask yourself if there might be a bias. Is this an advocacy group? Is this a business selling a product? If they are trying to sell something or this is about a controversial issue, you can be sure there's a bias.
   
   
3. Assess the currency. Look for date the page was created, revised or updated. Don't depend on copyright date since it is usually misleading. Also look for clues in the text. Also a
   
   Ask yourself if your topic requires current coverage. If you are looking for the history of Iceland an older article will be fine; but if it is for information on the current government, you'll need something in the last year.
   
   
4. Do a reality check and question if the content is reasonable; sites have been spoofed and hoaxes are very common. Which of the following seems right to you: whitehouse.net or whitehouse.gov as the official site of The White House in the United States?
   
   
5. Look for two or three other reputable sources that support the content of the first.

From these considerations, make a judgement about the reliability of the information.

Be alert to advertising

Often the first part of the web-results page at a search service will be given over to advertising. These are banners and web-site listings that are triggered by the keywords you used. These include paid-placement listings where websites bid money to place high in the results for certain keywords. At most search engines these "ads" are labelled as Sponsored Results or Featured Listings and may constitute the first five results on a page. At metasearch engines these listings may be faintly marked and jumbled in with the other results. These results may be useful to you, especially if you are researching products; but always be aware that it is an advertisement and that there will be bias.

Where to Next?

Learn more about the web pages and web sites.