Interpreting Web Search Engine Results

Because each web search engine varies in terms of displaying results, it is difficult to provide general guidance on evaluating and interpreting those results. However, look to see if the following information is available.

annotation

Hong Kong Tourist Association ONLINE SEARCH You can use this form to search the pages of Hong Kong Tourist Association World Wide Web site. This facility requires a forms-capable browser. Enter the word or words you want to search for. Separate multiple words with spaces. Case..
	99%	1998/04/08	http://www.hkta.org/search.html

ranking

date

domain

annotation — most search engines provide “annotations” with search results. An annotation is usually an explanation, but these annotations usually just show the first few sentences of the web page. They often, however, provide a good indication about the content of the site.

ranking — some search engines rank results by various criteria such as relevance, comparing the information in the site against the information in the search query.

date — the results from search engines provide a date which may be useful for evaluating the currency of a web site. Be aware that the date could refer to when the page was created or updated.

domain — most search engines provide the URL of the retrieved sites. Check the domain of the URL to determine whether the web page is hosted on an educational site (.edu), a government site (.gov), an association/organization (.org), or a commercial site (.com).

Once you have linked to a retrieved site, check to see if any information is provided about the producer/creator of the web page. Often this type of information is available through links such as, about this page, about us, about this site, or a link to the site's home page.