Searching the Web

Reading this chapter made me realize all the learning I need to do. I have used Edge in the past and always typed in Google.com to search for anything that I needed. I would type in the search bar what I was researching, and I am finding out that it is not a search bar but called a text bar, and you enter the search expression or query into it, click enter, and let the spider do its job hoping to get a hit.

I like how Google gives you an answer to your question unlike Bing or Yahoo. Its’ utilization of page ranking has helped me gather information from the better HTMLs. This chapter has opened my eyes to features that I never knew existed. I even asked my parents if they were familiar with the several ways to narrow down searches and they too were surprised. I found myself explaining to them how stemming has helped broaden research by taking the root of words and searching for different variants. As the reading went on and I got into site operators and filetypes, I was surprised that I never knew about this. Location and language operators are new to me when searching the web. I have noticed the time option but never used it. Uploading a photo for a search was something else I was never aware of. Also, being able to see if an image is or is not copyrighted would have been helpful in high school. I have used the AND function before but never OR or NOT. It is interesting what can be done to narrow down your search for the best information.

Evaluating the credibility of an article is something that I have done in past but not too much. A teacher once told me that you should try to use information from sites that ended in .gov, .edu. or .org the most. He said that those URLs are usually ok to better sites to use. Honestly, I did not always look for them and I never looked at text or researched authorship, expertise, and objectivity. I did not consider the professionalism of websites either. Graphics, colors, or flashing text never made me think a website was not the best to use. It makes sense now when teachers would tell us that Wikipedia was not allowed when citing paper. I did not know that the public could make entries to change the context. It is going to be interesting as we move forward when creating our own webpage. I hope I can learn Search Engine Optimization to make my website easily accessible.

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