Evaluating Online Resources Notebook

An important validation tool is to determine who links the to the site in question. Those who have included links to the site on their own home sites have made the decision to stake their reputation on the site by referring others to that location. It is analogous to placing a citation in a published article.

To determine who has linked to the site in question, use one of the large search search engines to conduct a search for links to the URL. For example, to see who has linked to Ray's Online Learning Update Blog at UIS, go to Google Search Engine and enter the phrase "link:http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/onlinelearning/blogger.html" (do not include the quotation marks and do not include any spaces) . This will return pages in the Google database which include links to Ray's Online Learning Update Blog at UIS. In turn, one can visit the sites which have elected to link to Ray' blog to see the range and nature of those who, themselves, have validated the site. If you have trouble typing in the long URL, click on this link to see how it works.