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Introduction to the Research Process: Searching Online

This guide will help you to complete any research project from start to finish!

Searching Online

The average student entering college right now has never lived in a world without the internet. But even a digital native can learn to improve his or her skills at searching online!

The Seven Googles

The Seven Googles 

When used in a knowledgeable way, Google is much more than a simple search box. An Advanced Google Search can lead you straight to high-quality academic and organizational websites. And the six other different areas within Google can broaden and deepen your search results as well. Try the options below.  

And these search engines that are NOT Google might provide you with just the different kind of result you didn't know you were looking for!

 

  • Bing is the nearest competitor to Google. A search engine owned and operated by Microsoft, Bing returns well-organized and image-rich results.

 

  • DuckDuckGo does not track your searches, so it protects your privacy AND returns results outside of your personal "filter bubble."

 

  • The Internet Archive is a digital library and also provides access to the Wayback Machine which can show you what a webpage looked like in the past! The Wayback Machine will also allow you to save a webpage as it exists in any moment.

 

  • WolframAlpha is a "computational knowledge engine" rather than a search engine, and responds to search terms with data instead of webpages.