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RESEARCH GUIDES

Search Mastery

Learn more about how search engines work and how to navigate search pages, tailor searches and search terms, and evaluate the information you find.

A black banner with the words "search mastery" highlighted in dynamic yellow font. The words are surrounded by clip art of people interacting with the internet and information systems through phones and computers.

Welcome to the Search Mastery guide!

Through this research guide, you will learn more about how search engines work and how to navigate search pages, tailor searches and search terms, and evaluate the information you find. The search and evaluation skills you develop through these modules should help you in your coursework and your life outside classes!  

This guide will help you to:

  • Explain how search engines rank & present results and use "click restraint" to navigate search results
  • Describe and use tools to make searches more targeted, specific, and successful
  • Describe parts of a search engine results page and how that content is generated
  • Describe the factors you should consider in deciding whether a website is reliable and read laterally to evaluate the credibility of websites

Note on Content

These guide is based on a module developed by the Search Mastery Interest Group at UMD, which includes faculty from the Colleges of Information, Education, and Journalism.

Many of the videos used in this guide come from a few key sources, described below. Videos from other sources are credited within the guide. 

  • Crash Course's "Navigating Digital Information" series. The content for this video series was produced by the Stanford History Education Group, a research group at Stanford, based on research with professional fact checkers and students. 
  • Dan Russell's "Power Searching with Google" online course. Dan spent 17 years working at Google, with a significant part of that tenure as a Search Anthropologist: “someone who tries to understand how people search, what kinds of things they seek, and how their tools influence their search process.” 

Please note: This guide focuses primarily on helping you understand, evaluate, and effectively use "traditional" search engines, or those not integrated with AI-powered tools like ChatGPT. However, many of the evaluation skills you'll learn through these modules, including lateral reading, are also effective approaches to evaluating the content produced by these large language models. If you want to learn more about using AI wisely and effectively, we recommend the AI & Information Literacy guide or Canvas module, developed by the UMD Libraries and the Teaching and Learning Transformation Center.

Ready to get started? Click the "Next" button below to advance to the first lesson.