Searching the Internet:
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
By Barbara Fanning
For those of us who travel the Information Highway daily the green light
has changed to cautionary yellow and the red light is imminent. The
benefits of searching the Internet are that it's free and the quantity of
available data appears to be limitless in scope. The irony in searching the
Internet is that as the number of available websites increases it becomes
difficult to locate, and access, the truly valuable (accurate and reliable)
ones. What do you do when the search engine you use provides results of
32,680 pages to peruse? The time it takes to follow these links to quality
sites is prohibitive.
Recently, a researcher at Ohio State University reported the results of a
study on Internet searching. Using 60 questions, whose answers could be
verified by standard reference books, Tschera Harkness Connell found the
correct answer 27% of the time and the wrong answer 9% of the time. The
remaining 64% of the time the website pages Harkness Connell followed
contained no answer or were out-of-service. The conclusion: searching the
Internet, like any research tool, is only as effective as the person using
it.
Here are some tips to increase the precision of your Internet searches:
- Understand the search rules of the search engine you use. Reading the
help file before conducting a search will allow you to limit your results
to a manageable amount. For example, Do you need to use quotation marks " "
to search a phrase, or a plus + sign to require the presence of a word? Do
organizational or proper names need to be capitalized?
- Formulate your search question. Consider possible synonyms and related
terms (charity, philanthropy, donation), alternate spellings (honour,
honor) or acronyms (NSFRE). Identify the key words and themes you wish to
search.
- Scan your search results for reliable and accurate websites. For
example, follow links to corporate (.com) or government (.gc or .gov)
websites vs. personal websites where you do not know the author's
credentials on the subject.
- Evaluate the website you use. Be aware of the following warning signs:
inaccurate data, misspelled words or outdated information. In the latter
case, Does the website indicate when it was last updated? Also, consider
who is the source of the data and whether it is presented in an objective
and factual manner.
- When you locate a quality website, and you have time, follow all of its
links to access like-minded websites. Bookmark, or save, the websites that
prove most beneficial and frequently return to them.
- Keep up-to-date about new search engines and their coverage by visiting
and monitoring the following website: http://www.searchenginewatch.com.
Barbara Fanning is Manager, Development Research at the Canadian Diabetes
Association, 800-15 Toronto Street, Toronto, ON M5C 2E3. For more
information call her at 416-363-0177 ext. 292, fax 416-363-3393, or email
at .
