Knowing basic search evaluation, mechanics, and methods can eliminate endless hours of fruitless web surfing. The vast amount of information on the world wide web can make sorting through all of the fluff extremely frustrating. Joe Sixpack can publish a web page on brain surgery, the top surgeon at MUSC could upload a web page of trucking tips, and an eighth grader could post an elementary interpretation of Romeo and Juliet . Just because information is floating around in cyberspace does not mean that it is accurate information. A good web page will list not only the author but also the author s credentials.
Recency can often be of extreme importance.
This commonly correlates with who wrote the page, what the page says, and where the page came from. Mechanics Search engines use what are called spiders or robots to search the web. This is because web page authors can embed HTML tags into their pages that trick the spiders into thinking that certain information can be found on that page. Unfortunately, there is no way to always guard against these tricks, but there are ways to work with existing search mechanics. Envision a perfect web page.