Your Personal GPS Part II The Internet

If you typically spend several hours a week surfing the web, you might not need to read this article. But, if you feel unsure about how to find information quickly and then don’t know how to evaluate it, this is written for you. I’ll start at the beginning and want you to e-mail me questions if you need to – there are no stupid questions at Life and Work by Design. We all started once….

First of all, a caveat about the information on the web. The internet has given anyone the ability to find out anything they want to know. But, because it is relatively cheap to put up an informational website, spout your personal opinions on a blog, or set up an internet store to sell items, it attracts every sort of entrepreneur and expert – some good and some bad.

It is up to you to research carefully and to limit your searches to legitimate sites with verifiable credentials. I’m not talking about shopping on the web – that’s a whole different ball game. This is about information sources and so-called expert opinions.

The way to get started is to use Google or Yahoo or Ask.com search engines. Although they will each show you slightly different results, any of these three are respectable organizations that do a pretty good job of searching through the gazillions of sites available. Don’t ask me how, they just do.

Since I am most familiar with Google, I am going to use it as an example, but the techniques I am going to explain work pretty much the same on any search engine. I’m assuming you know how to open your browser, Internet Explorer, Safari, Netscape, Mozilla, etc.

Once there, type in google.com and hit enter. (FYI - it is no longer necessary to type http:// or even www. – most browsers now know to add that) Let’s see what we can find for our three learners from the last lesson.

Go to the blank space in the center and type virtual assistant. Notice that a list of similar keywords begins to appear as you type. Click on virtual assistants and the Search Results page opens.

Let’s look at the basic page. Notice the tinted rectangle at the top that has three sites listed within it. There is also a blue line to the right with a list of small ads in a column beyond it. These sites have paid Google to be shown on any page that contains their pre-determined keywords and they hope you will click on them. In most cases, they want to sell you something but that doesn’t mean you should avoid them. But we’re looking for information so let’s go back to the list in the center of the page.

You see that each listing has a title in bold blue print, followed by a brief explanation of the site and then the actual url is shown in green at the end.

#1 Virtual Assistant Jobs - Virtual Assistants Locate virtual assistant jobs through our directory of legitimate work at home jobs. Companies in need of a Virtual Assistants? Find a virtual assistant ... www.virtualassistants.com/ - 28k - Cached - Similar pages

#2 International Virtual Assistants Association Nonprofit professional association dedicated to education and certification of virtual assistants. www.ivaa.org/ - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

Before you start clicking away, look at the first five or six entries carefully. Check out the descriptions and the urls to figure out which one might give you the information you are looking for.

Since we are searching for information about being a virtual assistant, the second listing, which is a professional organization might be the best place to start. Click on the various tabs across the top of their page to learn more about the group and the profession, certification, training that is available and how to post your resume for prospective employers.

Now let’s go back to the first one - www.virtualassistants.com This one is basically a job listing site – not a lot of help here yet unless you are already set up and ready to go. Notice the list of topics to the far right on this page – in this instance these are all links within their site that might yield more helpful information.

Click back to the original search page again. The 4th entry is from Wikipedia. This is an open source online encyclopedia that can be pretty informative. Be aware though that open source means that anyone can go into this site and add information or edit what is there, so it is possible for a supposed expert to post incorrect information. Buyer beware but it is generally a good source of information on any non-controversial topic.

Then the 7th one is from Entrepreneur Magazine. Like the association, this is a reputable magazine that can be a wonderful source of information for anyone wanting to start their own business, large or small. You can trust this article to be informative and helpful and they won’t be trying to sell you something. It might also contain other good links to go to.

This search was fairly successful because this topic is a hot one right now. Sometimes though, just typing in one keyword doesn’t bring up what you need.

There are a few tricks you can use. Use combinations of words such as non-profit women and your city name to bring up a list of related agencies and consultants locally.

Search engines don’t care about capital letters and there is no reason to type the word “and” but to combine several words type one, leave one space, and then type the next one.

Think about what you want – vacation Hawaii maui - will give you vacation information for that specific place. Vacation tropical island - will bring up way more that you want to wade through unless you are literally throwing a dart at the map to decide. Hotel Hawaii gives you hotels only first. This is just like trying to figure out where to look for a business in the Yellow Pages.

Try different general headings until you find what you want. Because keywords sometimes have different meanings, it can be helpful to put phrases in quotes to limit the meaning. For example, “Life and Work by Design” returns a page with my site first followed by other similar uses of that phrase. Without the quotes, all sorts of life and design things pop up related to interiors, architecture and web-sites.

Now there are a couple more things I want to show you on the main Google page. Go back to it and notice that in the upper left hand corner there are these words:

Web Images Maps News Shopping Mail

This is so cool…. type Virtual Assistants and Click on Images. Voila – you have photos of VA’s working. You can use many of these for brochures and marketing materials.

Now go back and click on News. This time you get a list of press releases, magazine and newspaper articles, and blog entries about VAs with the most recent at the top. This page will give you the most up-to-date information out there. Notice that the source for entries on this page is the second line in pale gray. Check those out and go to the ones you recognize as popular news sources.

Outsourcing News: CATCHFRIDAY Virtual Assistants Work Better than ... 24-7PressRelease.com (press release) - 13 hours ago When choosing a virtual assistant firm, there are so many companies out there. CatchFriday in the Philippines is a popular company offering an improved, ...

Online outsourcing Mainebiz Daily - 5 minutes ago By SAMANTHA DEPOY-WARREN When Marie Tucker first learned about virtual assistants after reading a blurb about them in a book, she was amazed at the ...

Don’t be afraid to click on links within sites if they sound interesting. You can always go back by clicking the left arrow up in the topmost left hand corner and if you get really lost in a sea of pages, somewhere up at the top you will see the word history – click on it to see the list of where you’ve been and go back to the beginning. This trick depends on your type of computer and the browser you use but it is there somewhere.

One more tip – when you find a site that really interests you but you can’t possibly explore all of it right now, you can bookmark it or add it to your favorites. Somewhere up on your top tool bar there is a place you can do this. You can set up folders within your bookmarks or favorites for specific categories of sites. Sort the sites the way you would sort papers in a file cabinet.

When you click on Bookmarks or Favorites you have choices to just ADD which creates a long list or to MANAGE where you can create New Folders with names like business resources, training classes, marketing.

When in doubt, ask a high-schooler ☺ or go to the library and ask about a class or tutor for web-browsing. I just took a class on social networking sites like LinkedIn for $10 and it was great!

If I get a lot of comments to this article with questions, I will continue the lessons by answering your specific challenges. Happy Surfing !