Thursday, November 8, 2012

Finding GOOD Web Resources Using Google

Has this ever happened to you? You need to research a topic for a paper, so you type your search into Google:


And your first result is WIKIPEDIA. So you click on the article...


...and it's full of information and everything you wanted! Woo hoo! Except for one thing... your instructor says you can't use Wikipedia because it's unreliable and anyone can edit it. Now what?! Try a

Google Site Search!

Google Site Searching allows you to search the Internet for only one domain (.com, .gov etc). This is important because .edu and .gov are regulated domains, which means that not just anyone can have a .edu or .gov URL (unlike .org or .com which anyone can get). When you search on only one of these domains you have a much better chance of finding a reliable source online. So, how do you do it?

Enter your search terms just like before, but add site, then a colon and then your domain (NO SPACES) to your search:

site:.gov

(YOU CAN COPY/PASTE THE ABOVE INTO YOUR SEARCH!)

Success!

You can see from the list of results that Google has returned trustworthy sites from government organizations in our search and it's information we can actually use! As always, if you have any questions about Google Site Searching or evaluating web sites, please Ask a Librarian!

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