Stage One: planning your research
   
1. Think before you search!

In the 1990s, a best selling self-help book for students had the title "If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else." In the 21st century, if you don't know what information you need to find, you'll probably find something else.

You can't just type into Google the first thing that comes to your mind. You must spend some time planning your search. This will help you find sources that save you time when you write your paper, and make it easier to get a good grade!

Studies show that when students rush into a research project without a plan, they end up looking at the same sources over and over again, and finally pick ones that aren’t helpful. Poor sources will cause you to waste time when writing your paper, and result in a poor grade.

So plan to succeed!  Rewrite the assignment in your own words. Then, make a list of key search terms, and create a series of terms that you can search in combinations of two, three or more.  When you find a good source, look at the most important words in it, and add them to your keyword list.  Try a series of keyword combinations.

Also, keep track of the sources you review. This will help you avoid repeatedly visiting the same bad sources, and will also help properly cite every source you use. 

2. Search engines are not always the best place to start your search

Ask yourself: should you even be using the Internet? Many schools offer access to remarkable databases that may be a much better place for you to start your research. Sure, they may be a little harder to start using, but they may help you find the credible information you need more quickly than any search engine will. As Joyce Valenza, librarian at Springfield Township High School in New Jersey, says, "students must be aware of the full research toolkit available to them. It's not just Google."

If you do use the Internet, ask a librarian or teacher if he or she can recommend a list of Web sites for you to search first.  There may be three to five Web sites that cover your topic credibly and thoroughly, and you may save a lot of time by searching on those sites only. You can use the search box on those sites, or add their names, one at time, to your keyword search on search engines.

3.  Don't believe everything you read!

Searching for information on the Internet is like detective work. You have to be skeptical. You want to find the best information you can, rather than the first thing that “looks good” or “sounds good.”  Anyone can publish anything on the Internet, cheaply and quickly.  Many search results you get will be either not credible or not entirely relevant.

Always verify information by confirming it with multiple sources. If you find a few unrelated, credible Web sites in agreement on an issue, your research may be done. This is not the case if you read something just once.

Stage Two: getting the most out of search engines

4. Try several search engines, not just one

Always use several search engines. Although major commercial search engines often return similar results, they work differently enough that you should use several search engines for every research project to help you uncover different resources.  Try a meta-search engine, like Zuula, which searches several search engines at the same time.

You should also start with the search engine that makes the most sense for your search - this isn't always Google or Bing. Specialty search engines often search a specific group of web sites, or use different methods to search the web, specialty search engines will almost always generate better and more targeted search results in particular categories.  Of course, we also recommend our own search engine, SweetSearch, A Search Engine for Students, which only searches 35,000 Web sites that our expert research staff has evaluated and approved.

For other search engines that you should consider, depending on what you are searching for, read:

May 2010 Alternative Search Engine Update
findingDulcinea: Choosing a Search Engine
Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need

5. Use special search functions to make the search engines work for you

If your assignment is to explain how bald eagles were saved from extinction, and you search “eagles,” you’ll find a lot of information about

• a football team from Philadelphia;
• a rock band from California;
• other types of eagles; and
• articles about bald eagles that have nothing to do with extinction.

So if you just type a single word or a question into a search box, you are not using the full power of the search engine to find information.  Use combinations of several keywords.  Then, on most search engines, you can narrow your search by using common words like AND, OR, NOT, or by using quote marks to show you are looking for an exact phrase.  If you search (“bald eagles” AND extinction NOT football), you probably won’t get any search results about a football team, a rock band or golden eagles.

Also, many search engines have advanced features or special usage tips that help you narrow your results. Read these links for advanced search tips from the most popular search engines:

Google search basics: More search help
More from Google
Bing Help
About Ask.com: Advanced Search Tips

6.  DIG DEEP! The best results are not always at the top

The best search results are often not at the top of the page - or even on the first page. Some Web sites are very good at making their content rank high in search engines, for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of their content.  Thus, results near the top of a search results page may not be useful, while the great sites that make your paper standout may be buried several pages deep.  So look beyond the first few results, and even the first page. Dig deep!

Stage Three: evaluating your search results

7. Are you looking at a primary source? Why not?

The best research sources you can find online will be primary sources, such as newspaper and magazine accounts or letters, diaries, films or photographs written or recorded at the time of the event. With primary sources, you won’t have to worry about information getting distorted from one interpretation to another.

Here are some tips for finding primary sources: Discovering Primary Source Material

And, since not all of your material will be primary source material, use the tips in this article to help you find out if you are looking at the original publisher of an article or an online copycat:  Finding the Real Source of Your Source

8.  Who created the Web site and writes its article? Why?

Finding information on the Internet is like being a good police detective: the information is only as good as its source. And, like a good detective, a good Web researcher never decides to use information without considering who gave it to him. As educational consultant Angela Maiers says, from an early age, you were told to write with the reader in mind; similiarly, you must read with the writer in mind. So always ask, “Who created this Web site, and who is the author of the content I'm reading?”

When you find an article on a Web site, visit the home page and the About Us page to determine what the site is really about.  If the site doesn't list the name of the publisher and its management team—and this is often the case—then leave and and visit another site. You would never trust a book without knowing its author and publisher; why would you trust a Web site without the same information? Also look for information about the publisher or author by searching their names in a search engine. Any credible publisher or author should be mentioned on other reputable Web sites.

Many Web tutorials instruct you to look at the "top level domain" - the letters at the end of a Web address, such as .com, .edu, .gov and .org. In the early days of the Internet, sites with endings such as .edu, .org or .gov could generally be considered trustworthy. But to understand why this is no longer true, read "Top Level Domains Not As Useful a Clue As Commonly Believed."

One "red flag" that we have spotted in our work is that Web sites who names describe their product often cannot be trusted. Many of these Web site names were purchased long ago by enterprising sales people whose primary interest in operating their Web site is to sell you products, not to provide credible information. So be extra careful when evaluating a Web site that has words such as "free/discount/best/your/4You/Web" in its name.

When you find content on Wikipedia, do you know who wrote it? No, you don't. Wikipedia's contributors are anonymous; you do not know anything about them or their credentials. It may be a place to do your "pre-research" to find keywords to search on, but before you use it for more, read "Top 10 Reasons Why Students Cannot Cite or Rely on Wikipedia."

For more on finding out who publishes a Web site and writes its articles, read "Question Number One: Who Wrote This?"

As a police detective would tell you, once you figure out who, next you have to figure out their motive. Is the site trying to sell you something? Does the site appear to have any social or political biases? Any of these factors can impact what information the site does and does not provide, and whether that information contains an unfair bias or a well-rounded overview of a topic. In our research, we've uncovered hundreds of Web sites that appear to offer valid information but in fact were created for another purpose. 

For more information, including some terrific examples of sites that pretend to be one thing but really are another, read "Question Number Two: Why Did They Write This?"

The Internet Detective offers “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," covering online hoaxes, spoofs, scams and some common ways to spot them, along with a few real-world examples.

UC Berkeley Library offers a slightly more advanced guide to evaluating Web sites.

9. When was the information written or last revised ?

As events unfold over hours, days or weeks, the stories often change a great deal. What a source says about a scientific discovery, about a living person, a war, a new technology or a lot of other things can quickly become untrue. So always check the dates of your sources. If you can't tell when a source was written, then keep looking until you find a good source about the topic that does have a recent date, so you can see if anything has changed. Always use a news search engine to see if there are any new developments, do a Web search with the current year as one of the search terms, and use advanced search options to find recent results.

On the other hand, if you are writing about a historic topic, you should make sure to include primary source documents, such as newspaper and magazine accounts written at the time of the event. If an event occurred in July, 1950, then sources written that month may offer a more accurate account of what occurred than a source written today, 60 years later.

For more, read "Question Number Three: When Did They Write This?"

10. Are the ads on the site clearly labeled, or are they masked as information?

Many credible Web sites contain advertisements, but when the ads begin to be mixed in with the site content, you may find that the content is not trustworthy.  Just as an infomercial on television is an advertisement disguised as information, some web sites create content that is only intended to sell a product.