COVID-19 and other pandemics: Researching to learn, or write about, COVID-19 issues

Online resources

While the "free Web" has legitimately earned a reputation for being a source for misinformation, the free Web is also an amazing source of accurate, helpful information.

Like any tool, we need to learn how to use it, for best results.

Here are some tips for searching for reliable COVID-19 information (and any health information) on the free Web.

 Image source: CC0 Public Domain 

Tacoma Community College does not control and does not endorse the advertising or suggested related content connected to any video or website linked here. When you have any questions about evaluating the reliability of any information you encounter, contact your TCC Library faculty.

Domain searches

Domain searches can often be your first step in locating accurate, reliable health information.

Website domains can tell you something about the type of information you are looking at on any given website: Here are some common domains:

.com = commercial site - their goal is to make money through viewer clicks or purchases. Information may be more sensational than accurate to get those clicks!

.org = often thought of as "non-profit organization", and while many dot orgs are non-profit and many of them do offer accurate, reliable information, seeing the .org domain is no guarantee; anyone can use the dot org domain for any purpose.

.edu = this is reserved strictly for verified education institutions. Mostly you will see this being used by colleges and universities, but also K-12 schools. Colleges and universities usually have high quality health information, but you also need to look at the whole URL for any page you are viewing: the page could have been created by a student - often student work is identified by a tilde (~) with a user name, such as https://tcc.edu/~sbrown. Student work may not be accurate. (After all, you don't know what kind of grade they got on their project!)

.gov = this is reserved for verified government agencies, either local, state, or federal. The health information from government Websites is often the most accurate, and the most updated you can find. The US government also has outstanding health information from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Making domains do some work for you

You can search for information, here, information about COVID-19, by using domain searches: You can tell Google to look for information from websites that carry a specific domain. 

End any search with: site:.domain. See below.

Here is one example of a domain search. This search is looking for information about COVID-19 booster shots specifically from college or university websites:

Try it: