The World Wide Web is a rich source of information and ideas for writers conducting evaluations. Product and media reviews are among the most popular items on the Web, and online editions of newspapers and magazines offer a seemingly endless collection of commentary and critique on everything from the latest diets to pending legislation to new techniques for studying and taking exams. If you’re interested in whether professional soccer has a future in the United States, for example, you could find data and opinions on Web sites such as SoccerTimes.com and USSoccer.com, check out developments reported in the sports sections of newspapers that have a Web presence, and read the online versions of magazines such as SoccerAmerica and 90:00. To search for information and evaluations for just about any subject that intrigues you, consult the following Web search resources.

General web search. The easiest way to learn about a subject through the Web is to visit an established search site, such as Google (google.com), Ask (ask.com), Bing (Bing.com), or Yahoo! (yahoo.com). In response to your keywords and phrases, these sites present ranked lists of sites they judge relevant to your search terms. These sites also provide advanced search forms that allow you to specify which keywords and phrases must, might, or should not appear on a page; to limit search results to particular domains such as .gov or .org; and to limit your search to Web sites updated within a specific time period, such as the last week or month.

Web directories. You can also search the Web using Web directories, such as Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) and WWW Virtual Library (http://vlib.org). Directories allow you to browse lists of prescreened sites by clicking on general topics, such as Arts or Business, and then successively narrow your search by clicking on subtopics. The lists are created and maintained by people — rather than by computer programs — so they provide more selective results than a broad search can; however, these lists also reflect the biases and assumptions of their creators, so you might miss out on other sites that are relevant to your topic.

Meta search. Meta search sites, such as Dogpile (dogpile.com) and Metacrawler (metacrawler.com), allow you to conduct a single search and return results from several Web search engines or Web directories at the same time. These sites typically search leading general search sites and directories and then present a limited number of results on a single page.

News search. To conduct focused searches for current and archived news reports, try sites such as Google News (http://news.google.com) and Digg (digg.com).

Reference search. Sites such as Encyclopedia.com (encyclopedia.com) and Information Please (infoplease.com) allow you to search for information that has been collected in encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, dictionaries, and other reference resources.

Media search. The Web is home not only to textual information but also to a growing collection of other types of media, such as photographs, podcasts, and streaming video. You can locate useful information about your subject by searching for recordings of radio broadcasts, television shows, documentaries, podcasts, and other media using established search sites, such as Ask, Google, and Yahoo!, as well as specialized sites such as YouTube (www.youtube.com) for video, Picsearch (www.picsearch.com) for images, and Find Sounds (www.findsounds.com) for audio.

You can learn more about searching the Web in Chapter 12.