Section 3.03 How to Search The Internet
A world where everyone can create content and place online can get pretty confusing unless it is verified using various search engines – Melvin Mayard
Search Basics
Use Specific Keywords
It’s important to remember that search engines operate by keywords. This is whatever you type into Google, also called a query. Once you hit Enter, Google searches its collection of web pages and tries to find the ones that best match what you typed.
Thus, it’s essential to use the most specific keywords you can pin down what you’re looking for. If you want to find instructions for adding your email to your iPad, for example, searching for an “iPad” will bring up way too many results. A more specific search, like “adding Gmail to iPad”, will have a much better chance of success.
You should also consider what kinds of wording the websites you’re looking for might use.
This also applies to words with multiple meanings. If you search Google for dates, it will bring up information on the current date, pages about the fruit, and likely sites about dating. Entering the date fruit will bring more relevant results.
Know What Google Ignores
Google filters out unnecessary information from your searches. Capitalization doesn’t matter so you can search in all caps, all lowercase, or some mix. Additionally, Google ignores common words (as stop words) like a, an, the, if, it, and more. Thus, email and email on an iPad will return the same results.
However, in cases of proper terms, stop words can matter. Searching for raven will bring up information about the bird, the football team, and companies by that name. A search for the raven, however, results in pages about Poe’s famous poem.
Google automatically corrects basic spelling mistakes. If you make a mistake, you’ll see Showing results for the link underneath the search box with the correct spelling. However, in all but the worst cases of typos/misspellings, Google will interpret what you meant.
Watch for Ads
For many searches, you’ll see ads listed above the organic search results. These are always marked with an AD icon. Companies pay for these ads to appear when you search for specific terms, hoping they’ll lead you to visit their websites. Be aware that clicking the first ad doesn’t always bring you to what you were looking for.
Try Advanced Search and Operators
For most searches, choosing your keywords carefully will provide good results. But sometimes you need more control, and that’s where Advanced Search comes in.
On the results page of any search, select Settings > Advanced search to access it. You can also go directly to the Advanced Search page if you like.
Note searches are consistently changing their format, if any button is no longer available then search ‘Google advance search’ in the search bar. The link should come up and respectively for any search engine.
Here, you’ll find many fields you can use to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The top boxes let you search for exact phrases, any of a set of words, or exclude words from your search. Below, you can narrow results by language, their last updated time, and more. It’s pretty powerful if you can’t seem to phrase your regular search quite right.
Google also provides shortcuts for these advanced search tools. In any average search, you can use operators to narrow your results. Try a few of these most useful ones:
To exclude a term, place a minus sign before it.
Example: Amazon -the river will exclude any results about the Amazon River.
To search for an exact phrase, put it in quotes.
Example: “Refurbished iPad Air 2” only shows exact matches for those words in that order.
To search for multiple terms, place OR or AND between them (in all caps).
Example: Pittsburgh Pirates AND Baltimore Orioles or Steve Jobs OR Bill Gates.
To search a particular website, add site: in the search. You can also exclude a site by combining this with the minus operator.
Example: ocean site:msn.com will search MSN for anything about oceans.
Avoiding Low-Quality and Fake Sites
Once you know how to search Google properly, the next step is determining the quality of the results it provides. There’s no way to make 100% sure a site is accurate and unbiased, but there are a few areas to check.
The URL extension is a good indicator of quality. Nearly anyone can create a website ending in .com or .biz, but domains like .edu (education) and .gov (government) are only available to those industries. This doesn’t mean that all .com sites are automatically suspected.
It’s wise to check the author of the article in question, too. Do they have a byline explaining their background and credentials? If not, that could be a reason to question the information. Most sites that have some level of credibility also have a Contact Us page with information on how to reach them.
The overall visual quality of a site can also provide information on whether it’s credible. Sites with sensational headlines, an abundance of advertisements, outdated visuals, and strange formatting may not be the best quality. If you’re not sure about a website, Googling its name can help you see if others believe it’s biased.
Featured Snippets Aren’t Guaranteed
Finally, you should be aware of Google’s featured snippets and how they work. When you type a question into Google, it might show a small box at the top of the results. This automatically contains extracts relevant text from a page that it thinks will answer your question.
It’s important to know that the featured snippet might not have the best answer or even the correct one. Thankfully, Google has improved the quality of the websites that it pulls featured snippets.
Search Like a Pro
There are always more tricks to learn for searching Google, but these ones will get you started with more efficient searching. With the power to search the web correctly, you’ll be able to locate more information than ever before and determine what sources are best.
Searching the Internet is about using the search bar,
- Search engines.
- Search engine-specific site ‘Google Scholar’.
- Websites.
Each search engine has its own algorithmic formula and therefore would deliver different results. To verify your search results, seek answers from various sources and then conclude with your final analysis. Google is not the God of the Internet as many would like to think so or have begun to believe.
The conclusive results are based on your personal analysis, your human input into the equation is critical to your satisfaction and reasoning. What the search engines provide is based on others’ opinions and statistics that may or may not be correct.
Summary
- The quickest search is by keywords, then short phrases.
- Search is also affected by the paid ad as the search engine algorithm may be obligated to show them despite if they are not the best.
- Avoid fake sites and controlled narratives.
- Searches do not react to specific words such as ‘if’, ‘at’, ‘the’ etc.
- Use various search engines.
ACTIVITY 3.03
Using Google search, research the relationship between the internet and technology.
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