Once you have an understanding of how web domains help to distinguish between different types of websites, you may want to limit your web searching to sites containing a specific domain. 

For instance, you may want health information specifically from government agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control or the National Institutes of Health (sites that will end with the domain .gov).

An easy way to do this in the Google search engine is to type the following in the search box:

[your subject] site:.gov

Example:   cancer site:.gov   

(to search for government-sponsored sites about cancer)

scholar.google.com

Google scholar is a subset of the Google search engine. While google.com will search the entire world wide web, using Google Scholar limits your search results to those from scholarly sources.

Most results from a Google Scholar search will be from articles, but some books, patents, and government documents may also be included. 
Although the full text of the article may be available, it may be behind a paywall so that full text access is limited to subscribers of the site.

If you encounter a paywall don’t pay for the article. As a UA-PTC student you have access to millions of articles for free through our databases. You can look up the full text of any journal through the UA-PTC Library Catalog accessible on the UA-PTC Libraries site at uaptc.edu/library. 
 

On the catalog search box, select the tab for Articles/Journals and type the title of the article in the box, then click the Search button.

On the search results screen click the View Full Text button to access the full text through the UA-PTC library databases. 

You may be prompted to log in with your UA-PTC User Name and Password if you are off-campus.

Not all websites should be considered equal. 

Those three little letters at the end of most sites can sometimes give you a pretty good idea of what kinds of information you might find on them.  However, you will always want to evaluate potential web sources based upon criteria such as what is listed on the box to the right ("To use or not to use...").

Here are a few of the "domains" that you might encounter while online:

.com = commercial; often (but not always) designed to sell a particular product  

   Example:  www.amazon.com   

.net = similar to .com; may include sites designed by individuals or companies

   Example: www.slideshare.net  (Slideshare website -- online presentation sharing)

.org = organizations or associations

     Example: www.cancer.org  (American Cancer Society)

.gov = U.S. government

     Example: www.whitehouse.gov  (Office website for the President of the United States)

.edu = educational institution 

   Example: www.uaptc.edu  (UA-Pulaski Technical College)

NOTE:  When doing college-level research, you will probably want to limit yourself to websites ending in .edu and .gov, because these are usually considered the most reputable types of websites.  Organizational websites (.org) may also be good sources, but be careful to watch for bias in these sites.