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CO 295-01: Introduction to Public Relations

What to Look For

When evaluating a web news source, look for:

Domain Name – Does the story’s domain contain a country code instead of .com? This can be an indicator that you are looking at a fake news source.

Contact Page – Many legitimate news sites contain a “contact us” page. Sites that lack a “contact us” page should be questioned.

Advertisements – Many "fake news" sites contain ads for questionable content or products that do not appear on most legitimate news sources. Keep an eye out for the kind of advertisements that are shown on the page.

Source: ListenWise

Searching Websites Effectively

Finding what you need on comprehensive websites can be time-consuming. Look for sitemap to locate specific materials, or use this handy trick:

  • Open Google search bar
  • Type in search term(s)
  • Type in "site" + ":" [colon symbol] followed by the URL.

 

Google corporate logo multicolored plus search bar showing search term, space, site:URL

This technique will yield search results for your keyword(s) only within the website URL.

Narrowing your results:

You can search by specific domains. For example, if you only want government jobs sites, you can search "jobs" +  "site:.gov" .

You can also also search for specific file types. For example, to search for a PDF document on jobs, search "jobs" + filetype:PDF.