Module 1- Part 2: Searching and Evaluating the Web

Using Web Browsers

Question 1

(A) The title of the page is Google and the Url is https://www.google.com/.

(B) The Chrome browser has the Google search page as the default setting. You can change your home page by going to mange search engines under settings.

Question 2

(A) Most websites are not tailored to visitors personal preferences. Users with vision problems or color blindness often have a difficult time viewing content. You can change web pages font type, color, and size by going to appearance under settings.

Question 3

(A) The default search engine form Chrome is Google Search. You can access this page by opening a new tab or window.

Searching the Web

Question 4

(A) Typing “learning to make webpages” in Google Search yields 7.53 million results. The first page of search results appears to include sites directly related to building a webpage. The accuracy of Google Search depends on your search string, with long tail keywords returning better results. Making web pages is a fairly broad search term, so I would estimate no more than the first 2-3 pages are worth looking over.

(B) Adding quotation marks to the search string narrowed down the search results on google to 12,200. Surprisingly, Bing and Yahoo each yield slightly over 1 million results. DuckDuck go was the most precise with 52 search results and Kartoo produced zero. Some relevant links I found were http://www.web-site-building-tips.com/learning-to-make-web-pages.html and https://www.codecademy.com/learn/make-a-website/p>

Question 5

Search results differ because each search engine has its own unique content ranking algorithm. If you’re looking for specific information you may want to consider using a different search engine then google. For example if you’re a scientist looking for scholarly research, you would be better of using a search engine like science.gov

Question 6

(A) According to their website, Wolfram Alpha describes themselves as a computational knowledge engine.

Using Metasearch Sites

Question 7

(A) A metasite combines and filters the search results from multiple search engines.

(B) Searching “learning to make web pages” yielded 8 pages of results. The matches appear to be ordered by relevancy and matching keywords

(C) After the first two page results the relevancy significantly decreases.

Question 8

(A) The search string on Mamma yielded zero results.

(B) Mamma uses an internal database to search discount offers it has listed on the site, with the results displayed in a grid format.

Finding Multimedia Elements

Question 9

(A) Google’s home page does not give users the option to search for multimedia. In order to access the multimedia options you need to be on the search results page.

(B) Once you’re on Google’s results page you can select video or image search options.

(C) A Google image search for Britney Spears yielded about 400 results.

(D) Clicking on an individual image will open a box with an enlarged version, as well as related images in a small grid format. Under most images you will notice the dimension listed along with “Images may be subjected to copyright”.

Web Hosting Sites

Question 10

(A) Two very popular web hosting sites are HostGator and BlueHost. Both companies offer WordPress Hosting, domain name registration, and website building tools. In terms of speed it seems that users give a slight edge to Blue Host. The great thing about each company Is affordable pricing, with Blue Host’s basic plan costing $2.95 a month and Host Gator at $5.95.