The Internet is home to an enormous variety of information genres/formats. Some genres, like Wikipedia articles, are easy to find. Others, like digital stories, may be harder to track down. Below are just some of the genres of information you can find on the Internet.
| Photos | Poems | Recipes | Blog Posts |
| Wikipedia Articles | News Articles | Social Media Posts | Comics |
| Memes | Advertisements | Protest Signs | Infographics |
The best search strategy for finding genres on the Internet varies depending on your topic and the genre of information you want to find.
A simple Google search can return millions of results in a fraction of a second. How can you refine your search to find narrower, more focused, higher quality results?
site:.org |
site:.gov |
site:.edu |
Top-level domain names (the two, three, or four letters at the end of a URL) can tell you a lot about who controls the site and the types of content available there.
| .com | .gov | .edu | .org |
|---|---|---|---|
| This is an unrestricted domain. Anyone can create and own a .com site. | This domain is only for governmental use, and is almost exclusively used by US governmental entities and agencies. | This domain is only for education use, and is almost exclusively used by US colleges and universities. | This is an unrestricted domain, but is often used by non-profit organizations. |
site:uark.edu |
site:ed.gov |
site:npr.org |
When searching for information within a specific website, you can limit your search to that site. This can be very useful for locating resources from professional association websites or even government sites.
"reading intervention" |
"Every Student Succeeds Act" |
"total water intake" |
Use quotation marks around phrases to search for words in the order they are typed. Use this technique to keep important words together and search them as a phrase instead of individual terms.
-constructivist |
-site:pinterest.com |
-"Besty DeVos" |
Add a minus sign directly before a word, phrase (in quotes) or site: restriction to remove that term from your results. This is very helpful when your results are clogged with unrelated, extraneous results.
after:2019-07-01 |
before:2020-01-10 |
before:2011 |
Use date limiters to find search results before or after a given date, or between two dates.
Look for the Tools menu when searching Google News, Google Images, or Google Video. The News Tools allow for limiting to blogs. Image Tools give options to search by size, color, type, and usage rights. Video Tools include limits on duration, quality, and source.