The Internet and Effective Internet Searching

1. Clarify

1.1. Students first need to take a moment to consider what information they’re actually looking for in their searches.

2. Evaluate

2.1. Students need to know how to search for the specific information they’re after on a website. Teach students how to look for the search box on a webpage or use Control F (Command F on Mac) to bring up a search box that can scan the page.

3. Cite

3.1. It is essential to reference the work you have used to avoid any copyright infringements.

4. Find words within a Web address

4.1. You can actually search within a Web address using the "inurl" command via Google; this allows you to search for words within the URL, or Uniform Resource Locator.

5. Search

5.1. Type in some simple search terms using only the important keywords. If the initial results aren’t what you want, alter the search terms and get more specific.

6. Delve

6.1. Entering quality search terms is one thing but knowing what to click on is another. You might like to encourage students to look beyond the first few results.

7. Use more than one search engine

7.1. Every search engine returns different results. Plus, there are many search engines that focus on specific niches: games, blogs, books, forums, etc. The more comfortable you are with a good variety of search engines, the more successful your searches are going to be.

8. Limit your searches to a specific high level domain

8.1. If you'd like to limit your searches to a specific domain, such as .edu, .org, .gov, and more, you can use the site: command to accomplish this. This works in most popular search engines and is a great way to narrow your searches to a very particular level.

9. Use quotes to locate a specific phrase

9.1. When you use quotation marks around a phrase, you are telling the search engine to only bring back pages that include these search terms exactly how you typed them in order, proximity, etc.

10. Widen the net with a wildcard search

10.1. You can use "wildcard" characters to throw a broader search net in most search engines and directories. These wildcard characters include *, #, and ? with the asterisk being the most common. Use wildcards when you want to broaden your search.