Finding Reliable Health Resources on the Web

A Do Well Be Well Course from the Texas AgriLife Extension Service

Section II– Using the Web: Search Engines and Keywords

Once you find your way onto the Internet’s information superhighway, there are many options to choose from. To find information on the Internet, most people use a search engine.

Search engines help us sort through all of the information that is out there in cyberspace by bringing us a list of sites that contain the information we want.

For example, if we want to find out more information about diabetes complications, we can use a search engine to bring us some websites that contain information on this topic.

To do this, you can choose a search engine (or click the search button on your browser) and type in the keywords diabetes complications. The search engine will provide a list of websites that contain these keywords and you can choose which ones you want to look at.

However, when you use a search engine, you have to be careful with the sites that come up as a result of your search. The sites that contain the best information are not always the sites that come up first in your list. In fact, the sites that come up first are usually the ones where the search engine has matched what you are looking for with special “tags” on the website. These “tags” are actually key words found in certain places on the website.

In addition, sometimes a company or group will pay the search engine in order to come up first in the search. Because of this, you have to know enough to decide if any site is giving you reliable information if they are trying to sell you something. You will learn more about this in the next section.

Good keywords help narrow your search, but too many keywords can keep you from getting results.

For example if you are interested in finding out if you are at risk for heart disease and you only type “heart disease” into a search engine, you are going to get lots more results than you need.

On the other hand, if you type “heart disease risk factors female over 45 hispanic” into a search engine, you probably aren’t going to get many (if any) results.

The best suggestion is to type in “heart disease risk factors”. This will give you enough results to help you find some reliable sites that contain the information you are looking for.

Enrichment Activities:

Use the following search engines to find out information about skin cancer. Compare the sites that come up first for each search engine. Compare the sites that come up in the top ten.

 

Continue to Section III: Putting It Together

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Last updated: 26 July, 2010

Educational programs of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service are open to all people without regard to race, color, sex, disability, religion, age, or national origin.