Searching the Internet

With search engines such as google, answers to most of our questions are just a push of a button away. But after listening to Chris Nolan in class, I now realize that we must be skeptical of these websites we obtain our answers from. In order to obtain more credible results, there are multiple ways we can manipulate a search engine such as google. I learned that by going to the advanced search tool on google, you can limit a search for a particular type of source, such as .edu or .gov. There are many other useful tools available such as google scholar, or google books, that may have more worthy results for an academic setting.

Chris Nolan also described how google comes up with the display order of the website on the query page. Google calculates relevance by using an algorithm. I suspected that relevance was calculated by how many times a certain word or phrase appeared in the article/website, but I was surprised to learn that how many times other sites link to a certain website gives that site more weight in ranking. So just because a website is at the top of the list on google does not mean it is relevant or has accurate information.