Research-quality Web Searching:
Google and Beyond
John Kupersmith
jkupersm@library.berkeley.edu
A “Know Your Library” Workshop
Teaching Library, University of California, Berkeley
Spring 2009
COURSE PAGE:
www.lib.berkeley.edu/find/types/websites.html
ONLINE TUTORIAL WITH MORE DETAILED INFORMATION:
www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html
Goals for this workshop
Search Google effectively and precisely
Know when to use other search engines and web directories
Evaluate what you find on the web
How Google works
BEFORE you search
“Crawls” pages on the public web
Copies text & images, builds database
WHEN you search
Automatically ranks pages in your results
o Word occurrence and location on page
o Popularity - a link to a page is a vote for it
o ~ 200 factors in all!
Searching Google
Think “full text” = be specific
war of 1812 economic causes vs. history
Use academic & professional terms
domestic architecture vs. houses
genome society
gets International Mammalian Genome Society
also try combinations with
association, research center, institute,
directory, database
Specify exact phrases
“tom bates”
“what you're looking for is already inside you”
1
Exclude or require a word
proliferation -nuclear
bush legacy +environment
Limit your search to …
Web page title
intitle:hybrid
allintitle:hybrid mileage
Website or domain
site:whitehouse.gov “global warming”
site:edu “global warming”
File type
filetype:ppt site:edu “global warming”
Definitions
define:pixel
define:“due diligence”
On the results page
Search box (use to modify your search)
“Cache”
“Related pages”
“Translate this page”
Google’s other databases
Images, Maps, News, Blogs, Books, Scholar, etc.
Why go beyond Google?
Search more of the web
Yahoo! -- search.yahoo.com
Get more options
Exalead -- www.exalead.com/search
Take advantage of human selectivity
Librarians’ Internet Index -- www.lii.org
2
InfoMine -- infomine.ucr.edu
Google Custom Search Engines (CSE)
How to find these:
www.lib.berkeley.edu/find/types/websites.html
Scroll down to “New Approaches to Web Searching”
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Critical Evaluation:
Why Evaluate What You Find on the Web?
Anyone can put up a web page
Many pages not updated
No quality control
o most sites not “peer-reviewed”
o less trustworthy than scholarly publications
Web Evaluation Techniques:
Before you click to view the page...
Look at the URL - personal page or site ?
~ or % or users or members
Domain name appropriate for the content ?
Restricted: edu, gov, mil, a few country codes (ca)
Unrestricted: com, org, net, most country codes (us, uk)
Published by an entity that makes sense ?
News from its source?
www.nytimes.com
Advice from valid agency?
www.nih.gov/
www.nimh.nih.gov/
Scan the perimeter of the page
Can you tell who wrote it ?
name of page author
organization, institution, agency you recognize
Credentials for the subject matter ?
Look for links to:
“About us” “Philosophy” “Background” “Biography”
Is it current enough ?
Look for “last updated” date
Examine the content
Text
possibly forged ?
why not a link to published version ?
Sources
documented with links or notes ?
do the links work ?
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Evidence of bias
in text or sources ?
5
Do some detective work
Search the URL in Alexa -- www.alexa.com
Click on “Site info for …”
Who links to the site?
Who owns the domain?
What did the site look like in the past?
(use the “Wayback Machine” link)
Which blogs link to it? What do they say?
Try the URL in Google Blog Search -- blogsearch.google.com
See what links are in Google’s “Similar pages”
Look up the page author in Google
Does it all add up ?
Was the page put on the web to
inform ?
persuade ?
sell ?
as a parody or satire ?
Is it appropriate for your purpose?
Try evaluating some sites
Search a controversial topic in Google
nuclear armageddon
prions danger
“stem cells” abortion
Scan the first two pages of results
Visit one or two of these sites
Use checklist (next page) to evaluate their quality and reliability
2/27/09
Google and Beyond Copyright © 2012 The Regents of the University of California is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be
available at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/contact.html.
