Navigating and searching the web

Introduction

• The World Wide Web is a collection of web pages stored on computers connected to the Internet.
• We call the ‘World Wide Web’ the ‘web’ for short.
• Often when you see WWW at the front of a website address, this means that it was created to be part of the World Wide Web.

Figure 1

1  The World Wide Web

• Each webpage has a unique address, known as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
• If you know the address, it can be typed into the web browser address bar, and the browser will retrieve a copy of the page and display it on your computer.

Figure 2

2  Navigating the web

• Webpages contain information in the form of text, pictures and videos, as well as providing links to other webpages using URLs.
• These links are called hyperlinks and they make the web an easy way to search for information.

• A hyperlink may be a link to another page on the same website, or it may be a webpage from another website from elsewhere in the world.

Figure 3

• If you drew lines between linked pages, it would appear to be a giant mesh or web spanning the world, hence the name ‘World Wide Web’.

3  Hyperlinks

• Moving your mouse cursor over a hyperlink will typically change the cursor to a pointing hand:

Figure 4

• The hyperlink itself can be shown as a full URL:

  http:\\www.google.com

• Alternatively, the hyperlink can be embedded within an image or a section of on-screen text:

Figure 5

• Regardless of how the hyperlink is presented on the webpage, it will provide a connection to the page or resource required.
• You should always be cautious when using hyperlinks, as they can be created to connect to a different site than the one shown on the page. Hyperlinks can be used to take you to a website created by criminals who wish to learn private information about you and perhaps steal your passwords.

4  Searching the web

• The web contains a vast number of pages on a multitude of subjects. What sort of things do you search for? Perhaps some of the following:
  • films
  • friends
  • celebrities
  • help with homework
  • shopping
  • games
  • local services (eating out, train times, etc.).
• When you search for things on the web, you normally use a search engine, which is an extremely large computer algorithm that discovers new webpages as they are created, and then lists relevant webpages when asked by you. Google, Bing and Yahoo! are examples of popular search engines.
• When you open up a web browser such as Edge, Firefox or Chrome, you will often be taken to the search engine preferred by the browser’s developer, for example Microsoft Edge is very fond of Microsoft Bing!
• When you type something into a search engine, it will search through all the webpages it knows about and provide a list of relevant sites. Depending on what you have asked the search engine to look for, you may be presented with a very long list of possible websites!

5  Improving your searches

• The more specific the entry you provide for a search engine, the more relevant the resulting webpages that it will return to you.
• If you search for ‘beach’, you will be presented with all the webpages that the search engine has listed with a connection to beaches. If you are only interested in pictures, you may find that you are not interested in many of the websites which may be selling holidays or showing videos of beach activities.
• Most search engines provide you with an option to narrow your search to a particular type of webpage:

Figure 6

• The Google search engine provides the option to narrow your search down to images, maps, videos or news, as well as providing more advanced search options using ‘search tools’.
• You can also be more specific in your search by providing more information for the search engine. For example, maybe you wish to find images of beaches in the UK during the winter, so you could narrow your search down by entering ‘UK beaches in winter’ and selecting an image search.

6  Activities

6.1  Navigating the web

Activity for the whole class

• Start with your school website and look at the links from the front page.
• Follow each of the links and draw a map of where they take you.

  (You will need a big piece of paper!)

Note:

• Some links will be to other pages in the school’s website and others will take you to other websites.
• Get a group of two or three to look at each new page and look at the links from there.

Figure 7

6.2  Being safe and responsible

6.3  Searching the web

6.4  Using search engines

7  End of course quiz

Now it’s time to test what you’ve learned in a quiz.

8  Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources:

Figure 1: deepadesigns/shutterstock.com

Figure 2: © Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

Figure 3: Publisher unknown.

Figure 4: From Pixabay. Covered under Creative Commons licence CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Figure 5: Examples of Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search

Figure 6: From Pixabay. Covered under Creative Commons licence CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.