How To Search On Line

I am going to shout;  GOOGLE IS NOT THE ONLY SEARCH ENGINE.    There are many others which are often better.  What?  Yes.

Let me be blunt; you do a Google, the first place you are directed to is Wikipedia.  Don’t wait for your Instructor to tell you; Wikipedia is NOT an Authority.   Wikipedia is something anyone can write in, and people have often written things that were NOT true.

To give you an example, there is an actor called Douglas Spearman.  He ‘learned’ he had AIDs from the Wikipedia Entry.   He contacted Wikipedia and the statement was removed, because he doesn’t have AIDs.  Hence, Wikipedia may be a place to give a scan, maybe check the footnotes at the bottom, but DON’T take it as factual.

Google keeps a record of all your searches and sells them.   Hence if you hear about a disease called colitis and use Google, you can expect all sorts of Ads popping up on every page, and lots and lots of Spam, (if you use Gmail) about the disease.

Hence find all the other Search Engines, and learn how to use them.

For example, let us suppose you’ve read some of my items and want to watch television programmes on line for free.  Enter that in a Search Box.

I went to ixquick, which is a private search engine, entered; “watch television programs online free” and got pages of sites.

You check the various sites, make sure that they don’t ask for money, name, joining, whatever, and use them.  Use different ones, because every so often one will go down, one won’t work, so you have a ‘bank’ of sites.

Many times you have to do a careful phrasing of your terms.  As you notice, I used the American spelling for program,  since one can expect most sites don’t recognise English they recognise American English.

When you search try to be precise.  Sometimes you will have to use a + between terms so as to get what you want.  For example websites+writing to get sites which have something to do with writing.  You can be more specific if you know what you want.

Don’t tie yourself to any particular search engine, use all of them at different times, for it is ‘uneven’.   Some are great in the ‘blanket’ kind of search; (such as when you are looking up something you don’t want to be tracked, like a disease), some give better selections, not just Wikipedia.

When you use different engines you are more likely to get what you want, at least closer to what you want, then when you lock yourself into one.