Getting Started With Research: Finding Information Online

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Sometimes, depending on your assignment, you might want to find information online. There are good and bad parts to using Google or another online search engine to find information. The good: The internet is full of information about every possible topic and a lot of it is free. The bad: Anyone can post information online, which means it may or may not be true.

Google has some ways to make searching for trustworthy information easier. Here are some options:

• Google Scholar. Google Scholar narrows your search to find academic articles (the same kind you would find in a library database) that are available online.
• Google News. Google News narrows your search to only news websites, like those for CNN, the New York Times, and more. News websites are updated as the news happens, which make them ideal for researching current events, and are more trustworthy than random websites or blogs.
• Advanced Search. Google's Advanced Search page allows you to narrow your search in a lot of ways. One of the most useful options is "Site or Domain," which allows you to only search websites that end in .edu or .gov. That means that the websites are from educational or government institutions, and so the origins of their research is known and trusted.

When you're doing a search online, just remember to be careful and know where the author's information is coming from.

Looking for information online? Here are some useful online search tools: