Take off the Blinders!Evaluating Internet Reliability

By Naomi Bates

Updated October 2006

Let’s first look at three generations of who we’re

dealing with – then the what

Baby boomers

• Born between mid 1940’s to early 1960’s• Lived through the Beatles era• Are the most powerful members of United

States society today politically, culturally and academically

• Beginning of television, production of the hydrogen bomb, first successful satellite in space, first copy machine created

Generation X

• Born between early 60’s to late 70’s

• Lived in a world without AIDS

• Teen years lived in the early to mid eighties

• Lived without microwaves and cable television, remembers using a cassette recorder, and purchasing the newest technology – the VCR.

The Millennials

• Born from the late 1970’s to the present

• Last generation of people wholly born in the 20th century

• Has lived with access to the Internet, cell phones, IM’ing, DVDs, Ipods/mp3, MTV and satellite television

Typical Search Engines

Marketing for Millennials

                      

Newer Types of Search Engines

37.com

Newest type of search engine- Cluster engine

Hybrid engine

One major engine that has combined typical searching with clustering effects. Most radically changed search engine since its conception:

Typical Search

•Keyword: vegetable root

Use quotation marks around the words to create a better search!

Problems with searchesFootball research:Superbowl XXX

This occurs within every search engine, including:

Google

Yahoo

MSN

Hits on keywordRoosevelt

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

hits per MILLION

GoogleYahooMSNAsk

Wiki what?

What is wiki?

Derives from the Hawaiian language meaning : fast

What to Look For:• Validity: author, contact information provided,

link to author’s homepage• Currency: when was the site first created and

when last updated?• Content: what is depth of information offered?

Are there link to other useful/reliable websites?• Purpose: Is the site trying to persuade you?

Educate you? Market a product? Are there any biases?

• Accuracy: Citation/credit should be used for all sources mentioned

Another typical search

•Most people surf through the “Top 20 Results” websites without going further!

•KEYWORD:AIDS facts

Can you decide?

Other common problems

• Webpage made by another student, not authority: keyword “medieval clothing”

• Webpage biased: keyword “holocaust”

Which Websites Can You Trust?

Online databases from educational companies can be used as websites or hard copy sources:

Web 2.0 tools

Social bookmarks