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PSYC 331: Psychology of Women (Prof. Donna Garcia): Locating Web Sites

Find Web Sites

This assignment tells you to

  1. Use a popular web search engine (e.g., Google) to find two websites.
  2. One of the sources needs to be an authoritative, credible source and the other needs to be a popular and non-credible source. 
    1. In addition to using a search engine, you can go to a source that you know in advance should be credible, such as a government agency (e.g., the U. S. Department of Labor or the National Institute of Mental Health) or a professional organization (e.g., the American Psychological Association). 
  3. Download, print (to pdf), or screenshot the most relevant page (e.g., summary page, first page or screenshot of website) from your credible source and do the same for your non-credible source. Include both with your paper.
  4. Do NOT use a scientific article for this exercise; scientific articles are not websites.
  5. See the boxes below for tips on using search engines.

Examples of Basic Search Strategies

  • Pay attention to the order of your keywords:   grass snake is different from snake grass
  • Enclose phrases in quotation marks:  “fathers who stay at home”
  • No need to type “and” between terms:  “hubble telescope” pulsars
  • Run separate searches for similar terms:  nutrition cancer  ; diet cancer
  • Run separate searches for different word endings:
    • politics corruption ; political corruption ; politicians corruption
  • Use the site command (site:) this way to restrict results to educational institution sites:
    • “feminist theory” site:edu
  • Use the site command (site:) this way to restrict results to government sites:
    • “feminist theory” site:gov
  • Use the site command (site:) this way to restrict results to nonprofit sites:
    • “feminist theory” site:org

TRY THESE STRATEGIES NOW!

Google Web Search

Examples of Advanced Search Strategies

THESE advanced strategies may be used in the regular Google search.

  • Use the minus sign (-) to exclude words:
    • “planet saturn” -cars
    • “planet saturn” -automobile
  • Use the all in title command (allintitle:) this way to search just website titles instead of every word on a site
    • ​allintitle:statistics domestic violence

  • Use the file type command (filetype:) this way to retrieve Excel files with numeric data:
    • filetype:xls "domestic violence"

  • Use the double period command (..) this way to retrieve numeric data in a range of years:
    • "domestic violence" 2015..2050

  • Use the double period command (..) this way to retrieve numeric data greater than a given number:
    • "alternative fuels" 50 .. mpg Be sure to leave a space after .. and before mpg!

  • Pro Tips:
    • When searching for images, be sure to click on Images in the black toolbar at the top of the Google search screen.  It doesn't matter whether you do this before or after you run your search.
    • Use the whole word wildcard symbol this way: spending on * health to find spending on mental, private, public, psychological, etc., health