Chapter 4 Internet Research

Whols Lookup

It is often useful to determine the owner or sponsor of a specific website, or to determine if a domain name is already being used. •a WhoIs lookup can provide this information •several sites, such as www.easywhois.com or www.whois.net can quickly show users the domain name owner •often websites provide links labeled About that describes who owns the website

Keywords and Hashtags

Keywords and hashtags tell search engine what to display. #Cowboys or keyword "Cowboys" will both display info on Dallas Cowboys. Differences: •# displays social media feeds (Twitter & Instagram) •not all news outlets use social media, so some articles might not be displayed •a keyword search shows both social media and nonsocial media search results

SEO

Strategies, techniques, and practices used to increase the amount of visitors to a specific website Helps to ensure that a web site is known and reachable by search engines. Increases the likelihood of more site hits.

Boolean Operators

Allow searchers to find more accurate search results. •some of these characters include the terms AND, NOT, and OR (all capitalized) •Connecting keywords with "AND" searches for multiple items in the same web page or article. •NOT excludes web pages or articles with the designated keyword •OR searches for multiple keywords on different pages OR: Use "OR" when you are searching for documents including one or another of your search words. •you can also use /^ to execute an OR search NOT: Use "NOT" in conjunction with "and" if you want to exclude certain results from your search. •for example, Notre Dame NOT Football will return results relating to Notre Dame that do not include the search term football To be more specific when conducting a search on the web, tools such as parentheses and AND, OR, and quotation marks can help narrow the search results. •Quotation marks ("") allow the searcher to search for an entire phrase •Parentheses are used in conjunction with AND and OR to further specify a result

Image Searches

Almost every major search engine has tools that allow users to search the Web for images or videos as well as articles on subjects. For most search engines, just type the subject of the image and then click the "Images" button. •for example, in Google, Bing, or Yahoo, typing pepperoni pizza in the search box and clicking the Images button will bring up numerous images of pepperoni pizza.

Search Engine

An Internet search engine can perform three basic tasks: 1.Search the Internet for information based on the search criteria entered by the user 2.Indexing of keywords that are found 3.Display the location of the information stored in the indexes Commonly used search engines include Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The information contained in a search engine database is determined by how each specific company records URL information. It is common practice for the web site owner to submit their URL and associated information to the search engine company (SEC). •SECs use indexes to speed up the search process.

HTML

Commonly used HTML objects: •Anchor—Clickable text, usually blue, that hyperlinks to another web page—e.g. jungle tours: anchors to a Costa Rica jungle tour site •Image—Searches web pages containing images—e.g. sloth image: Amazon rainforest •Link—Displays web pages about the search topic with links included—e.g. McGrawHill Connect link: MH.com •Site—Displays web pages about a search criteria on a specific site e.g. Playstation site.Sony.com

Websites

You should evaluate websites using following criteria: •Reliability. •Relevance. •Validity. •Authenticity. •Objectivity. •Bias Keep an eye on the objectivity and biasness of the information on the web site. Nearly impossible to find info without bias, but this does not mean sources are not credible. When viewing a website, investigate the background of the author and site. Find info with as little bias as possible—this is the most constructive. Reliability Look for errors in facts, spelling, or language use. If many errors are present, question the validity of a site. Relevance How current the information is? Out-of-date information can be an indicator that the site may not be the best resource. If you are using a website for research purposes, research the publisher's qualifications. Check to see the author's background, who published the authors work, and what is the relationship between the author and publisher. Check to see what references are included on the site. Investigating the uniform resource locator (URL) can also indicate validity.