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How To Find Information Quickly Online

Saturday, December 31, 2011

With so much information available on the internet then yes you can find information on pretty much anything you want, but it is getting harder to wade through the irrelevant information and spam in order to find what you need.
Also, when you find the information you need then how do you know you can actually trust the person who wrote it? If it is just a fact you want to know, or when a new TV series starts then it doesn't really matter, but if you are trying to find out something about your car or are planning a holiday based on the information you discover, then you need to be sure it correct.

Wikipedia is always a good starting point for any search online. I know it is the first place I turn if I want to know information about someone famous or a country I want to visit or on an animal I am interested in for instance, however don't forget anyone can edit the information in there so don't trust it blindly. Wikipedia is basically an online encyclopedia, but if you want to know how to do something, as opposed to finding information about something, then you will need to search elsewhere.

YouTube is a great source when you want to know how to do something, as often written instructions can be confusing or the author misses off steps which they assume you would know to do. We all have different ways of learning though, so if you actually prefer written instructions then there are plenty of sites out there which can help you out, like Wikihow.com.

While most of the information online is free then there is some information you are going to have to pay for like personal records which have had to be collated by private companies so they charge for access to recoup their costs and also turn a profit. Ancestry.com is a good example of a site you can pay to get information like that from. If you need access to birth, death, marriage and divorce records (which you will to research your family tree) then they can give you that. You will need to pay a monthly fee for access to the site, but it is well worth it if you get the information you require.

One thing we haven't touched on yet is the powerful search engines which you can use to find what you are looking for like Google. The search engines are getting smarter and more useful all the time. Take Google for instance, I have noticed that recently if you type in a simple question like the conversion rate for feet into meters, then it simply tells you the answer. Most of the time Google is really all you need as they will search Wikipedia and all those other sites for you anyway so you don't have to, I estimate about 90% of the time then Google will give you the right answer when you need it. That means 10% of the time then you are either going to have to be specific with what you type in so you can find what you need, or maybe abandon the search engine altogether and just turn straight to the large authorative sites like Wikipedia and About.com.

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