Are Websites Helpful to Students Who Are Researching?

By: Angela Sampson


Students in the 21st century want information to be accessible right away. Books contain useful information but it takes awhile to find what one is looking for because the person actually has to read the book in its entirety or the topic related to the research. Interviews take some time to conduct because an individual has to set up an appointment, prepare questions to ask and hope that the interviewee says something relevant to the topic being probed. On the other hand, websites can deliver multiple sources just by clicking the mouse and most sites are scannable, hence a person would know if the site is pertinent or not.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has made it possible for relevant sites to be shown in the first 20 pages of Google or Yahoo. Keywords that contain the phrases or words being searched for enable the spider, a term that describes the tool that Google or Yahoo uses to determine if a site is useful or not, to access and analyze the content of a site. This and new ways that the two most recognized search engines employ to be cautious of sites that comprise worthless content, aid in presenting sites that are useful.

However, relying on a website without checking if the site's author is reliable can be analogous to a person believing in someone with unfounded beliefs. Note that anyone these days can create a site and claim that the so-called information are "facts". Hence, government websites, school websites, or experts on a particular field that have a site are credible sources. Make sure that your research is derived from them.

SEO has resulted in pages that would benefit users, it is now up to people to extract the information that they need from these sites and give credit to people who share their knowledge to others.