How to Find Anything Online: Become an Internet Research Expert

Einstein once said, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

The same could be said of intelligence. What they don’t tell you is that the “smart” people of the world are, in most cases, just better at researching and learning things than everyone else. But researching is a learned skill, not something you’re born with. And while some people might be predisposed to learn things more easily than others, it’s generally not enough to make a measurable difference.

By learning how to research, you can quickly and fairly easily become knowledgeable about just about anything. And with the Internet, almost anything you could ever want to know is at your fingertips. You just have to learn how to access it. It’s all there, online, for free. Here are the techniques I’ve used to find pretty much anything online.

Start with Wikipedia

Whenever you try to learn something new on the Internet, start with Wikipedia. A wealth of information is there, covering practically every subject in an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand format

Whenever you try to learn something new on the Internet, start with Wikipedia. A wealth of information is there, covering practically every subject in an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand format.

The key to using Wikipedia as a source, though, is in how you make use of the information. You have to pay attention to a number of things on a Wikipedia page aside from the main content. First of all, read the introduction to the page. This is where you’ll usually find a quick description of the topic, along with alternate and related terms.

Skim the content to find the parts of the article that you need to know about most. Some articles are short and don’t have a list of contents. Others are several thousand words long. Reading the entire thing is usually unnecessary. Just skip to the sections that are relevant to you.

Next, check the references and related resources. The references is a great place to get in-depth information on your topic. These links often include scholarly journals and articles and other respected sources.
The related sources section includes external links to in-depth information. These websites often include professional associations and organizations devoted to the topic as well as general websites with good topical information.

Move on to Google

Once you’ve built a good foundation through Wikipedia, move on to a Google search (or whatever search engine you prefer).

Having read a bit on Wikipedia, you should know the main terms and keywords associated with the subject you’re researching. Start your general search with these terms. When researching something, I always open a new window in Firefox. For each link I visit in a Google search, I open a new tab so that I can keep my original search results page open.

And if I click on additional links on pages that I have opened, I don’t have to go back through 10 or more pages to return to my original search.

Go Multimedia

Text isn’t the only educational content on the web. Video, podcasts and slideshows are out there to explain pretty much anything you can imagine. The advantage of so much multimedia content being available is that it caters to people with different learning styles.

If you learn best by watching demonstrations, then head on over to YouTube, Odeo, Vimeo or any of the many other video websites and start typing the keywords that you found on Wikipedia.

Check Out Free Educational Resources

A ton of colleges are now putting their course materials online, accessible for free.

A ton of colleges are now putting their course materials online, accessible for free. MIT offers its entire catalog as open courseware, with lecture notes, resources and syllabi. Other two- and four-year colleges are following suit.

You’ll also find purely web-based open education initiatives that cover subjects you might not find at a traditional college. These free courses offer a ton of organized information on any given subject.

Some colleges offer their lectures in audio and video format. Princeton, for example, offers some of its lectures through iTunes, as does the University of Virginia, Duke, Emory, Yale and Stanford.

Look for Tutorials

Depending on your topic, you may be able to find tutorials. For pretty much any practical skill (and a whole lot of unpractical ones), you can find an online tutorial that teaches you how to do it. You can find tutorials through search engines (just add “tutorial” or “instructions” to the end of your keyword search). You can also find them on these websites:

Instructables is a general tutorial website that offers step-by-step instructions on projects in categories such as arts, crafts, food, kids, music, outdoors and pets. Every tutorial has photos and/or diagrams to illustrate the process.

eHow offers categorized instructions and tutorials created by users. They include both text and video tutorials on a variety of topics, including law, health, food and drink, electronics and computers.

WikiHow is a user-editable how-to manual that covers a ton of different topics. Because of its wiki format, tutorials and instructions are constantly being improved.

The Tuts+ Network offers tutorials on a variety of tech topics, including Photoshop, web design, Flash and photography. Its tutorials are split into separate blogs based on topic and are written by experts.

 

 

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