There are several different resources that may be employed when researching information. This paper will focus on two particular tools that were utilized while searching for information on the topic “privacy and security on the internet”, search engines and databases. My goal in this paper is to present information on why search engines and databases produce different types of results. Before I can begin to discuss why the results of searches are different for databases and search engines, I need to define what each tool is. A database is “a usually large collection of organized especially for rapid search and retrieval (as by a computer)” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). A search engine is “computer software used to search data (as …show more content…
Google is very fast and proudly boasts it returned about 632,000,000 results in simply 0.46 seconds. EBSCO’s database returns only a mere 808 search results in relatively the same amount of time. The two search results numbers are vastly different but why the large gap? Taking a look first at Google’s results they are impressive, but what information is actually being retrieved? Analyzing this vast number of returned results can be a daunting task. The top few links and the entire right hand column are advertisements for products that provide the best internet security on the market. Several links are very old and not relevant to the information being sought. After discarding the aforementioned results, there appear to be several useful links ranging from news articles from reputable companies such as CNN, Forbes, Reuters, Microsoft, Norton as well as blogs and personal webpages. By reviewing the truncated URL and domain name, I can determine where the source of the information is located and if the site may provide reliable information. However, there is no indication of whom wrote the article, what type of article, a date, if the information was validated, accurate or is strictly opinion in the displayed search results. While there are several advanced tools which may be applied to filter your results, (time …show more content…
At first glance, I am able to determine what the article type, whom wrote the article, where the article was published, the page the information is located on and the date. The results(records) are numbered and the database tool also enables the results to be filtered by the date, source, author and relevance. The data can even be further filtered by the source type (Magazines, Academic Journals, Trade Publications, newspapers and reviews) and limited to full text, references available, Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals or publication date range. With wide array of filtering options available, locating information direct and prompt. A database administrator maintains the records in the database and reviews the content to ensure the information is valid, accurate and relevant to the database. Although limited by the records entered into the database, the information contained in the database can be more reliable than the