Help with Internet Searching

It’s easy to plunk a few words down in the search box at Google. It’s not always easy to retrieve accurate, timely and authoritative resources for your research paper or project. Here are some tips to help you. Call the Library (760-773-2563) or drop by for additional help, if needed.

How to search the Internet

Quick Help:
Go to your favorite search engine. (A linked list appears at the bottom of this page.) What are the key words that describe what you need? If they’re primarily common words, what are the most unusual ones? If none of them are unusual, or if the most accurate description involves common words, can you make a phrase that describes what you need?

Let’s say that your paper is on the effect global warming has on sea life. Hundreds of thousands of sites have the words global and warming and sea and life somewhere on the page. Here’s your search strategy:

Search as a phrase: “global warming” (use quotation marks.) Helps a little, but what about the sea life? 
Try “global warming” sea life. [Most search engines will read this as global warming (words together) AND sea AND life.] Or try “global warming” “sea life” (two phrases.) It looks like this:

 
Maybe you missed some things. Substitute the word ocean for the word sea and do the same search again. Now do the same using the word marine.

Got what you needed? Are the resources from sites that you can trust? (And, perhaps more importantly, ones that your instructor will accept as meeting necessary academic criteria.) No? Then use Google’s heavy hitter: Advanced Search.

Notice we’ve put sea OR ocean OR marine, so Google will find pages that have any of those words. In exact wording or phrase, we’ve put global warming (no quotation marks needed here.) Notice the last box: site or domain name. We’ve put in .edu to limit our results to sites from an educational institution (hoping that means the results are more academically trustworthy.) You might also try .org (organizations). Now Google will search for sites from educational institutions that have the word life, the phrase global warming, and the word sea, ocean or marine.

Still not academic enough? Try Google Scholar:

Get Really Good
Check out these tutorials. Also check the sections on how to evaluate websites:
Bare Bones 101 from University of South Carolina
The Tutorial from UC Berkeley

Search Engines
Google
Yahoo!
Bing
Ask
All the Web
Alta Vista

Or “meta” search engines like Surfwax or MetaCrawler

Become a “pro” at Search Engine Showdown or Search Engine Watch

An Organized Internet
Or go to a site that has thousands of pre-selected sites, organized by subject:
ipl2 (merger of Internet Public Library and Librarians Index to the Internet)