Backtracking the URL

In addition to looking at a home page and its links, a lot can be learned from the URL itself. David Warlick suggests teaching students how to apply their digital detective skills to a URL-backtracking from right to left, removing one element at a time and looking for clues at each subpage you reach along the way.

HOW TO When your students get to the domain name, what does its suffix (.com, .org, or .gov) tell them about the site and its orientation? Warlick recommends paying a visit to http://www.internic.com and searching for the domain name. Who owns it? What can you find out about that author by conducting a search? You can also find out what other online resources link to the site you are researching-either by typing the command "link: http://" followed by the site name in the search window at Altavista or using the "link" tool at Google. What does that tell you about the nature of the information and the visibility of the site and its author?