PAID SEARCHES

One thing to realize is that when you do a general search, you get a lot of sites that actually pay Google to show up when a specific search word is used. Those first sites in the list are almost all paid and that is how Google makes their money. Educational sites rarely pay or advertise that way so you tend to get sites that are more geared towards providing information and not just getting people to buy stuff. Which is not to say that the commercial sites don’t sometimes have good information or that, even if the information is not so good, that they are not interesting to review.

COMMERCIAL VERSUS EDUCATIONAL SITES

Watch out for sites that are selling products, which is actually most of the internet!! But some sites might have articles or information that are specifically geared just towards selling a particular product. These sites are not necessarily bad—in fact they can be great for a review. But please realize that a review of such a site should make clear the perspective and maybe even analyze what kind of market or industry there seems to be in general—what other sites sell similar products—how many are there—do there seem to be hundreds or is this something specific.

GOOGLE ADVANCED SEARCH

One way you can really use Google to your advantage is with an Advanced Search. You just click that right on the Google home page tool bar and you can limit your search more specifically. Especially in the “domain” which is the kind of site you are searching. If you just enter “.edu” in domain, you will only get educational sites which often contain higher quality information, although they too must be evaluated and reviewed with an eye for what might not be right or valuable.

ALSO ORGANIZATION SITES.

Remember that sites that end in .org are usually for non-profit organizations and tend to have less commercial information, often with info geared towards helping people with their heath or to find information or resources they need.

GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH

One thing can do with Google is an Image Search. Here, you click on the Tool Bar on the main page where it says ”Image.” Try it and you’ll see that the results give you a bunch of thumb-nail images from sites that, in general, are more likely to have nice pictures or graphics. I really like these searches because you can then go to that site and see what else it has, but you at least know what kind of image you might expect to find. For many of our topics, I am very interested in how they relate back to the basic anatomy and physiology and that often involves using images.