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SOCL 365: Illness Narratives (Beard): Using Websites Effectively

GETTING THE MOST FROM GOOGLE

Take advantage of Advanced Search

Make your search more specific by using quotation marks around phrases. 

You can limit your search to a specific website by adding site: url of website here. You can also use this strategy to limit to specific domain such educational websites or government websites by addingsite:edu or site:gov to your search.

Use the minus sign (-) to subtract terms you do not want to appear in your results. For example:  tap dance -ballet

Google Scholar is a great resource for searching scholarly content online. For more information on Google Scholar, go to the Scholarly Sources tab.

EVALUATING WEBSITES

Google is a great tool--just make sure that you evaluate the websites in your search results.
Questions to help you evaluate the websites that you decide to use for your research.

Author
Who is the author?
How is the author qualified?
Is the author an expert?
Does the author have bias? (Remember that a bias may not be directly stated.)
If no author is listed, why?

Host
Who hosts the site?
What is their purpose?
Does the host have bias?  (Remember that a bias may not be directly stated.)
What is the domain extension? This can help you determine how reputable a website is. For example, .gov is the domain for United States government sites and .edu is for US Educational institutuions.

Sources
Does the site provide its sources?
Does it refer/link you to other credible sources?
Is the information able to be cross-referenced?

Currency
Is the site regularly updated?