Hale Middle School

How To Find And Evaluate Websites

Finding a Site

Finding a good website is an art form. However, you already have many of the tools you need to get good at searching the web for information…
--You already know how to find the important words (keywords) and ideas in works of non-fiction and fiction.
--You have worked with Venn diagrams in math and know how to use Boolean logic (AND, OR or NOT) to narrow your results.
--You know how to spell. Alternatively, you know how to look up words that you’re not sure about.
--You know how to read and follow directions.
These are the fundamental skills for finding good information on the web.

First, find a good search engine. There are many and new ones are added all the time. Some have been designed for specific types of searches; others are very general. Several good general search engines to try are:
o Google http://www.google.com
o Alltheweb (FASTsearch) http://www.alltheweb.com/
o Vivissimo http://vivisimo.com/
For more search engines and comparisons as well as web searching tips, try Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/. Each search engine has different rules for searching. If you take the time to look at the ‘Help’ section and follow the directions, you will get better results. Search Engine Watch also has a page of search engine instructions.

Next, you need to determine the key ideas or words for your topic. The bigger your topic is, the more you need to narrow it down to get a reasonable number of hits in your search. For example, if you are researching combustion of carbon for science, you might would find that there are a zillion (well, 203,000) sites out there on that subject if you type in ‘carbon’ and ‘combustion’. (Using GOOGLE, you don’t have to type in ‘AND’ or ‘+’). A lot of people burn things. If you add more key words to make your search more specific, you will get fewer results. It is also possible to put in so many key words that you get no results. If this happens, you should take some away. Let’s say for the sake of argument, that you were interested primarily in the combustion of breakfast foods. So you substitute ‘pop tarts’ for ‘carbon’ in your string of key words (again in GOOGLE). You will note that the results are fairly concise and to the point:


o Strawberry Pop Tart Blow Torches http://www.sci.tamucc.edu/~pmichaud/toast/
o The Flaming Pop-Tart Experiment http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gmbrown/tart/

So, by knowing good key words, following instructions for the search engine (some require the use of the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT or symbols such as +,-), and spelling all the words correctly, you have gotten some very satisfying hits on an interesting topic. However, suppose your teacher has told you that you must determine that all of your web-based information is reliable…that you must evaluate your websites (just in case flaming pop-tarts are not good science). This will require some skills that you might not have yet…


Obviously, you must look at more than the domain. So the next question to ask is “Who put up this site and why?” or authorship. Look to see if an author is listed and if so what are his/her qualifications. A reliable organization will give you plenty of information about themselves.
Authorship or responsibility:


o Who is it? (Is it a 2nd grader? Is it a college professor? Is it a biology professor with a website on physics?)
o Are they qualified to give you information on this topic?
o If there is no author, can you tell what the organization is?
o Is it one you have heard of before?
o Do they represent only one side of an issue?
o Do they state their mission or purpose for creating and maintaining their website.
Note: If you know very little about the subject matter in the website, you will need to be especially careful to look for the right authorship credentials!

Now you need to look at a few other things.
The first is the timeliness of the information. Sometimes it doesn’t make a lot of difference. Historical information usually doesn’t change very much. Scientific information changes a lot, so it is essential that you be aware of the age of the information.
You should also take note of who is linked to the site. Are they linked to sites that you know to be reliable? (Even better, do known reliable sites link to this site?) Are they linked to known unreliable sites?
Is the site a big pain to navigate? If so, it might be a sign that it is done by an amateur. In addition, are there a lot of bad links? This is another sign that a site is not being maintained well, if at all.
Here are a few sites to look at. Think about all the questions and decide if you want to use the information from each one.
--The DihydrogenMonoxide Research Project http://www.dhmo.org/ (This site and the next one are related. Hint: See if you might know what dihydrogen monoxide is.
--Coalition to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide http://media.circus.com/~nodhmo/


--Feline Reactions to Bearded Men http://www.improb.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html

-- Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus -- http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html


Remember... if something seems unbelievable, it is probably not true! Check out the Urban Legends Reference Page http://www.snopes.com/ for help in deciding whether or not something is a hoax.

In summary, be careful out there! There is great stuff on the web, but there is also some really bad stuff, and a lot of stuff in between. Ask questions and use your skills to figure out which you are found.

Updated 1/06 SDF