Search the Internet Victoriously: Home

Listed here are some benefits to using the Internet for your research needs:

• Timely - very up to date information on current events
• Size - the Web is enormous and grows every second
• Convenient - you can search the Internet from any location at any time on any device
• Easy to use - you can easily search the web using many different search engines
• Variety - information is provided in many different formats available for different learning styles
• Free - a great deal of what you need for research can be accessed without  subscription fees (excluding fees for Internet access)
• Social - you can use the Internet to share information with other users across the globe

Although the Internet offers a lot of benefits for the college researcher, there are limitations:

• Size - because there is so much information on the Internet, it can be difficult to wade through the trivial to get to the scholarly content
• Permanence - content is always in flux, being changed, updated, archived, deleted (* for archives, see the Wayback Machine)
• Accountability - because it can be difficult to track down the content owner, author, sources of some information, it can be difficult to trust everything on the Internet
• Missed information - most people do not click past the first page of their search results (in 2011, 75% did not go past page one according to Search Engine Journal)
• Surface Web Only - not only do most search engines miss "deep web" databases (content not indexed by a search engine because it exists within a structure requiring separate searches) but there is a lot on the web that can only be accessed by a subscription (example: library databases) or pay-per-article fee