January 15, 2015 By Larry Snow

How to Effectively
Use the Internet as a
Research Tool

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We all use the internet for various reasons: Casual surfing, networking via social
media, for information related to work, or solving a problem. The internet is loaded
with billions of data right at your disposal. Simply input your search terms and
within tenths of a second the results are right before you.  The first page usually
has the answer that you are looking for, but what happens when it isn’t.  If you’re
like me, you might change your search terms or try a different search engine.
Sometimes it can be like following Alice down the rabbit hole, each page clicked
leads you deeper and deeper down the hole until you can’t remember what you
were searching for in the first place.
If you do arrive to a page that has information you were after, how do you
know if the information is correct?
A while ago, I produced a podcast on Open Source Intelligence tools and how
important a skill it is to an executive protection professional. I believe using the
internet effectively as a research tool is just as important. The key to locating
relevant references is to know how to search for the information.
Here are some tips, websites to use, and general advice to keep you out of the
rabbit hole.

A Thing or Two about Search

Engines
Searching the larger search engine indexes, like Google, are good for finding more
obscure information, but you will get a lot more results to sift through. Also
interesting to note is that some search engines only search titles of web pages and
others will search the entire text of a page. Search engines come in a variety of
formats: directory listings like Yellow and White pages; Video and image search
directories like YouTube and Flickr; and social media search engines like Twitter
and Facebook.
Not all data is available to search engines. Content can be hidden behind firewalls
for example.  Public content can also be hidden by telling the search not to search
a specific folder using a robot.txt file in the root of a website.

How to Search Efficiently

In general when using the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing)
you’ll want to use the following commands:

 Use quotes for a specific search phrase Ex: “ I love searching”. This will
narrow your search results considerably.
 Use the plus sign ( + ) as AND – Ex: taxes + fiscal cliff
 Use the minus sign ( – ) as NOT or Exclude – Ex: taxes + Washington -DC
 Use the asterisk ( * ) as a Wildcard: Ex: Snow* will look for snowstorm,
snowflake, etc.
Complex search examples for searching the big 3 (Google, Bing and Yahoo)
LinkedIn search:

 Search LinkedIn profiles  – site:linkedin.com inurl:pub ( “Fidelity Investments”)

 Search LinkedIn updates –    site:linkedin.com inurl:updates (bofa | “Bank of
America”)
 Search LinkedIn companies –   site:linkedin.com inurl:companies ( “Novartis”)

Facebook Search:

 Search Facebook groups: Ex. site:facebook.com inurl:groups (“militia”)

 Search Facebook pages: Ex.  site:facebook.com inurl:pages (“bank of
america sucks”)
 Search Profiles: Ex.  allinurl:people “Jane Doe”  site:facebook.com

In the above complex searches simply replace your search terms in the quotes,
and replace the “site” with a site you are interested in searching.
There are advanced search tools which I’ve listed at the end of this article.
Assessing Internet Sources
So with all your searching you find a page, post, website that has the exact
information you are looking for, but how do you know if it is accurate?

Here are some tips when evaluating

an internet source
 The first thing and probably the most obvious is who is the authority. Is the
source from CNN or Joe Smith’s blog or Articles R Us?
 The next thing I look for is the date of when the source was written; if not the
source page date, look for when the website was last modified. This might be
a little tricky. If no date is available try using the advanced searches below.
 Next I look for who is the author of the source. Does it come from a reputable
person? If no information is found, I conduct a separate search just for the
author.  Is the author qualified to write about this topic?
 Does the author cite facts in the source?
 Next I look for contact information. Is there a telephone number or address
for the publisher, authority or author?
  Last but not least I check for an overt amount of grammar and spelling
mistakes. I read through the source and make sure it is cohesive and makes
sense.  I’ve come across articles where it has been “spun” to juice up the
website’s SEO. The result is pieced together ramblings.

Appendix:
Advanced and other Useful Search Engines

 Google Advanced Search: http://www.google.com/advanced_search

 Google Book Search: http://books.google.com/
 Google Scholar Search: http://scholar.google.com/
 Yahoo Advanced Search: http://search.yahoo.com/search/options
 Google Blog Search: http://blogsearch.google.com/
 Twitter Search: http://search.twitter.com

Other useful search engines are listed on this page:

http://www.internettutorials.net/engines.asp