Analysing Websites

1
Analysing Websites

• Decoding URLs, deciding where to go, and knowing
  who to trust.

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After the search, then what?

• Search engines can provide many, many possible
  links to follow.
• Many of these will NOT be related to the
  information you are seeking.
• Many of these will be unreliable, untrustworthy,
  biased, or just plain wrong.
• Making sense of these many options is the real
  skill in dealing with information.

3
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

• This is a URL, or a website address.
• You can tell a number of things about this
  particular website, just from the URL.
• the type of data
• the name of the computer
• the type of network
• the country of origin
• the directory it is stored in
• the name of the file itself

4
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

• http stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.
• It tells the web browser that this data will be
  delivered as a webpage.
• // is a standard piece of URL punctuation.

5
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

• Most URLs begin with www, to indicate they are a
  part of the World Wide Web, although they dont
  always have to.
• This particular URL belongs to a computer named
  abc, which belongs to the Australian Broadcasting
  Commission.

6
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

• This computer has the word net to indicate that
  it belongs to a private network.
• Other indicators here might be..
• .com A commercial (business) website
• .gov A government website
• .edu An educational institution
• .org A non profit organisation

7
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

• This computer has the word net to indicate that
  it belongs to a private network.
• Other indicators here might be..
• .com A commercial (business) website
• .gov A government website
• .edu An educational institution
• .org A non profit organisation
• Some countries only use a 2 letter abbreviation

8
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

• The .au shows that this website is registered in
  Australia.
• Every country has a unique 2 letter code
• .jp Japan
• .nz New Zealand
• .uk United Kingdom
• .za South Africa
• No country code usually means the USA.

9
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

• Taken as a whole, this section of the URL is
  known as the domain.
• The domain is the bit separated by dots.

10
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

• After the /, is the directory.
• There can be a number of directories.
• This tells you which directory (or folder) on the
  computer you would find this particular webpage.

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Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

12
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/contents.html

13
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/faq.html

14
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/4corners/index.html

15
Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/children/bananas/index.html

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Reading a URL

• http//www.abc.net.au/children/play/games.html

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Who would you take more notice of?
18
Who would you take more notice of?