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Find and Evaluate
Internet SourcesFinding Internet Sources
Searching the Internet can seem a daunting and overwhelming
task, but many tools exist to help you in your search. You’re
most likely to use three of these tools often in your search: directories,
search engines, and metasearch engines. Let’s look at each
of these tools individually.
Directories
Directories are also known as subject directories
or website directories. Two common directories are Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)
and Lycos (http://www.lycos.com). The strength of directories is that
they are compiled and indexed by humans. Directories generally present
you with major categories, and your choices lead to the categories
becoming more and more specific. For example, if you choose “Games” in
Lycos’ Website Directory, you’ll be able to decide whether
you want to learn more about board games, card games, or party games
(among many others). If you decide you want to learn more about card
games, you’ll find more choices, including Whist, Bridge, and
Spades. Essentially, you receive increasingly specific categories
with each decision you make.
Directories you may want to try include Yahoo!, LookSmart,
and Open Directory.
Search Engines
Search engines do keyword or phrase searches of a database
(not the entire World Wide Web but the portion of it stored within
that particular engine’s database). Your keywords as well as
the use of Boolean operators influence your list of results. The structure
of individual search engines also will influence the results and the
ranking of your search. Search engines may rank the items in your
search by the title of the website, the first heading on the web page,
META tags, page popularity, and so on. And, unlike a directory, there’s
no human making decisions about categories of information. Additionally,
keywords are often case sensitive (meaning CAR, Car, and car may result
in different results) and correct spelling may be important to maximize
the effectiveness of your search.Search engines will, however, search
more of the web than most other tools for finding information online.
You’ll benefit the most from search engines by reading the Frequently
Asked Questions or help files to see how the search engine “works.” Two
examples of search engines are Excite (http://www.excite.com) and
Google (http://www.google.com). It can be very helpful to “get
to know” one search engine—you’ll get better and
better at searching (and get better results) as you increase your
knowledge of the search engine itself. But, for items like research
papers, you will want to try more than one search engine in your search
to increase the likelihood of finding valuable sources. You may also
want to try a metasearch engine.
Search engines you may want to try include AltaVista, Excite, alltheweb,
Google, and HotBot.
Metasearch Engines
Metasearch engines are search engines that submit your keywords to
several search engines. While metasearch engines sound like a good
idea, they do have drawbacks. Metasearch engines collect the first
few results from each search engine to display for you, which may
leave out valuable information in your search. Two metasearch engines
include Dogpile (http://dogpile.com/) and Metacrawler (http://metacrawler.com/).
Metasearch engines you may want to try include Metacrawler, Ixquick,
SurfWax, Dogpile, and ProFusion.
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A Bright Idea . . . Check out the Reviews of Search
Engines
Have you ever wondered how all the search engines are different?
You can find out on the Internet. Some sites offer lists or tables
that compare popular search engines. Check out the Search Tools
Chart at http://www.infopeople.org/search/chart.html. |
Continue to Evaluating Internet Sources
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