156 8.1 GatherinG and UsinG sUpportinG Material
LOCATING INTERNET RESOURCES You have undoubtedly used Google to
access material on the Web. If you feel overwhelmed by the number of sites a
Google search can yield, a specialized vertical search engine, a Web site that
indexes World Wide Web information in a specific field, can help you to narrow
your search. For example, Google Scholar indexes academic sources, and Indeed
indexes job Web sites.
Another strategy that can help you to narrow your search is a Boolean
search, which allows you to enclose phrases in quotation marks or parenthe-
ses so that a search yields only those sites on which all words of the phrase
appear in that order, rather than sites that contain the words at random. Boolean
searches also permit you to insert “AND” or “+” between words and phrases
to indicate that you wish to see results that contain both phrases, and similarly,
they let you exclude certain words and phrases from your search. They also let
you restrict the dates of your hits so that you see only documents posted within
a specified time frame. These relatively simple strategies can help you to narrow
a list of hits from, in some cases, millions of sites to a more workable number.EXPLORING INTERNET RESOURCES As you go to the Web sites you have
located, you will probably find a wide variety—from sites that try to sell you
something to the official sites of government agencies and news organizations.
One clue to the type of site you have found is the domain, indicated by the last
three letters of the site’s URL (for example, .com or .org).
Although sites can be classified in a number of different ways, most Web
sites fall into one of the following categories.^1- Commercial. The purpose of this type of Web site is to sell products or serv-
ices. The domain is usually .com. - Country codes. Web sites from countries other than the United States include
a country code. For example, Great Britain is .uk and Canada is .ca. - Educational. This type of site provides information about an educational en-
tity. The domain is usually .edu. - Entertainment. Internet addresses ending with .com may indicate entertain-
ment Web sites. - Government. The purpose of this type of Web site is to provide information
produced by government agencies, offices, and departments. The domain is
usually .gov. - Military. Information about or from the military is usually indicated by
Internet addresses that end in .mil. - News. Web sites that provide information about current events usually have
the domain .com. - Organizational. The purpose of this type of Web site is to advocate a group’s
point of view. The domain is usually .org. - Personal. Information about or from an individual may be indicated by a
variety of Internet addresses.