3. EVALUATING THE RESULTS OF YOUR WEB SEARCH

The previous module looked at analysing your topic and doing the initial search. This module looks at the next step in your search starategy - evaluating the search result.

Overview of result page

When looking at the results page you would quickly scan through the list of web pages to see whether it is worth having a closer look at the web page.

First, let's have a look at what you can expect on the result page. Note: your screen might look a bit different than screen shot below.

On your Google screen note the information shown on screen shot below:

1 - Results: number of web documents retrieved.

2 - Title of web page -links through to the website.

3 - Snippets of text from web page - search terms highlighted.
4 - URL of web page - a factor to look for when evaluating credibility of the website.
5 - Cached: A link to the last version of the page Google 'crawled' (cached version)
6 - Similar: A link to a search for websites similar to the listed website. Works well when a lot of websites link to the listed website.

What you may find in the results list

Websites from various organisations and bodies - look at both the page title and the domain name in the URL.






Blog posts:





Various files - PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentation, etc - There is a choice to open the file as indicated (doc, pdf) or View as HTML. If you have any problems opening the original file, the HTML version is a quick alternative, though the original formation will be changed.






Results from Google's specialist search engines - Google Book search, Google Image search, Google Scholar search, etc.

----------------------------------------------------

HANDS-ON DEMONSTRATION

If you don't have the search results from the last module on a separate screen:

• Right click on Google (open up in a new window / tab)
• Enter keywords - children's literature, controversial, history - click on Search

Then:

• Scroll through the first 3 - 5 pages (using the Next link at the bottom) to find examples listed above - have a look at them and note how the different kinds of sources behave.

Sometimes you will come across sponsored links (advertisements) either on the right side bar or at the top of the results - titled Sponsored links.

• Scroll to the top of the page and change the search terms to garden design
• Notice the sponsored links on the right.

----------------------------------------------------

What to look for when evaluating the results

The title of the web page will give you a good idea what the topic of the web page is about.

Read snippets to get an idea of whether the website may be relevant or useful.

• You can also see which variations on your search terms Google has included. ( In this search example controversial and controversy have been used in the search.)
  
• Also note if the search terms relate to the concepts of your query. Although the results on the first few pages seem relevant, in some cases history and controversial/controversy refer to something other than children's literature.

The URL can give an indication of the expertise and bias of the author of the website. (More about this in the section on evaluating websites.)

Also look for clues, such as alternate terms, phrases, or related concepts that may be useful for further searches on the topic. In this example alternate terms that could be used are banned, censor/censorship; useful phrases "list of controversial books", "most challenged books", "top 100 books".

------------------------------------------------

DISCOVERY EXERCISES

Look back to the result of the searches you did in Module 2. For each search you did go through your result list and answer the following questions:

1. What variations on your keywords were used?
2. Go into 2-3 web pages listed on the first page of your results and look for the keywords you specified in your search query. (Use Ctrl+F to search for words on the page.)
   • Did you find the words?
   • Were they used in a way that is relevant to your search query?
   • If you can't find the words, go back to the list and click on the cached link - search terms should be highlighted.
3. Did you find other types of documents (pdf, doc, ppt) on the first two pages in your list of results? Were they relevant to your query?
4. Were results listed from Google's other specialist search engines?
5. What alternate keywords could you pick up when you went through the results?

------------------------------------------------

Once you have found enough websites with relevant information, you need to carefully evaluate whether you can trust the information provided on the website. (Module 8 Evaluating Websites will guide you through the process.) Module 4 will look at how to refine your search if you are not satisified with your initial search result.

Go to Module 4

Updated: September 2010