Analyzing Your Results

Most of the time there is no way to know if an item is going to be useful to you just by scanning your results list. You need to look at the actual site and read through the information it contains to know for sure. You can, however, anticipate what you might find by the clues contained in the URL for each item listed.

Types of Internet Sites

The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address for a particular site on the Internet. Traditionally, URLs have ended with a three-letter extension which indicates the type of site you are visiting. The most common extensions or "domains" for U.S. sites are listed below:

• com (commercial sites)

  Example: cnn.com (CNN Cable News Network)

• edu (education sites)

  Example: www.webster.edu (Webster University)

• gov (government sites)

  Example: lcweb.loc.gov (Library of Congress)

• mil (military sites)

  Example: www.history.navy.mil (Naval Historical Center)

• net (networks)

  Example: www.gcc.net (Global Chamber of Commerce)

• org (organizations)

  Example: www.austria.org (Austrian Press & Information Service)

International sites often end with a two-letter code unique for each country. Some countries and their codes include:

A number of U.S. sites are using the country code "US" in their addresses, and you will see other codes added in the future as use of the Internet expands.

Sifting Through Your Results List

Note the URLs as you scan through a results list. You may want to focus on specific types of sites and ignore others. Below are some categories of sites and the kinds of information each might contain.

• com

  Commercial sites are obviously prime sources for product information.

• edu

  Helpful for finding research, instructional materials, etc.

• gov

  Good sources of official documents, forms, statistics.

• org

  Organizations and associations provide a lot of position papers, fact sheets, advocacy information, membership data and contacts, etc.

Additional clues may be found within a URL. For example, many school systems in the United States have "k12" in their Internet addresses and feature web pages done by students. Also, many web sites sponsored by individuals have a tilde (~) in the URL (e.g., http://domain.edu/~smith/mypage.html). You may not want to follow up on these if you don't anticipate they would meet your information needs.

Of course, you should be careful about making global judgments simply based on a URL. Some education sites (.edu) done at universities may include less than authoritative pages, and some sites done by schools and individuals are excellent sources of information.

The URLs listed in your results list may have other uses. Let's talk about that in the next page.