Searching+Only+the+Right+Types+of+Sites

Anyone can create a web site. When you were younger, it might not have mattered where search results came from. It's on the web, right? So that's good enough. But now this is NOT good enough. The information you gather and use in your own writing needs to be authoritative information. When Google searches the web, it doesn't discriminate: your searches will pull up web pages created by elementary school classes just as quickly as it will pull up pages created by governmental agencies. You have to take control.

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First, you need to know the code. Web pages end with a three or four letter code that tells you something about who created the page.

.com -- Think of this as meaning "common." Anyone can create a .com page. .net and .org -- Same thing. Anyone willing to pay for it can get a page with these extensions

.edu --now THIS is different. Only a recognized educational program or organization can get a page with this designation: school systems, colleges and universities.

.gov -- Only web pages created by people working for the US government and governmental agencies can get a page with this extension.

So, if you're searching for the latest information on cancer research or trying to get authoritative studies of economic growth in Alaska, you want to enter a search that gets you ONLY sites that have some actual authority.

You do this by adding the term **site:edu** or **site:gov** after your search terms. This will limit your search to these types of sites only.