Searching the World Wide Web
The following describes tips and information about effective searching on the world wide web. These practices can be used for effective academic research and general Internet exploration.
1. Open your Internet provider with a browser.

• The internet is the set of networks connecting over 600 million people worldwide. A connection to the Internet is offered by a provider, and a browser such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. is used to look at web pages.
• The World Wide Web (WWW) is a collection of electronic documents called webpages or websites. A homepage is the main page of a web site. It is also the page that is automatically brought up when a web browser is opened. A web site may have internal links to pages within the site, and external links to other web sites.

2. Organize your search.

• IvyLynks is a collection of quality web sites chosen by Ivy Tech librarians for their legitimacy and reliability. To use IvyLynks:
  a) Go to the Ivy Tech Virtual Library at www.ivytech.edu/library/fortwayne
  b) In the Search and Find: section click Evaluated websites with IvyLynks.
  Navigate IvyLynks by clicking on any of the categories shown, or enter search term(s) in the box at the bottom of the page for a direct search.
• A search engine allows you to find webpages by entering in search terms. From IvyLynks, click the Search Engines category for a list of search engines.

3. Find quality websites and pages.

• The address of a web page, commonly referred to as its URL, provides information about the web site. Most web pages begin with http://www. meaning the page is located on the World Wide Web.
• The next part of the URL is often the name or a shorthand version of the name of the website. For example, the address for Google is http://www.google.com see figure 1.
• The last part of the URL is called the domain. This tells you what kind of entity the website belongs to. Some common examples of domains are given on the following page.

Press the Page 2 tab below for a list of top level domains

Searching the WWW Cont'd
Common top level domains are listed in the table below.

If the domain is:	Then the website is usually owned by:
.com or .net	Anyone, including a business, organization, or an individual
.edu	A college or university
.gov	The federal government
.mil	The military
.org	A non-commercial organization
.jp	Someone in Japan
.uk	Someone in the United Kingdom

Press the Page 3 tab below for tips on advanced search techniques

Finding Quality Websites cont'd

• The accuracy of information on websites is not always trustworthy. Critically evaluate all websites before using, especially those ending in .com.
• A reliable web page generally offers additional information about authors and their respective credentials.
• Check the site for contact information to ask any questions you may have.
• Check the currency of copyright or revision dates. For more information on evaluating a website for quality, see the library handout Evaluating Websites, available on the Virtual Library under Tutorials and handouts.

4. Modify your search using advaced search options

• Many search engines and databases offer an Advanced link near the search box. Click the link, and you can modify your search to find fewer but better webpages.
• Advanced searches will often allow you to limit the results of your search to resources that have been updated recently, have certain domains or specific languages.
  For example, Google Advanced will allow you to limit your search to web pages that are written in English, have been updated in the past 3 months, and are in the domain of a government organization (.gov) see figure 2.