SEARCHING INFORMATION ON THE WEB? WHAT YOU MUST KNOW ABOUT WIKIPEDIA AND GOOGLE

Wikipedia

The founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales is quoted in BloombergBusiness Week saying the following about Wikipedia:

"… I don't think people should cite it, and I don't think people should cite Britannica, either... People shouldn't be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should...give good, solid background information to inform your studies for a deeper level."

The following words come from Wikipedia.org  from an article titled Wikipedia: Academic use.

Wikipedia is not considered a credible source. Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community,

from freshman students to professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything. However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable, because Wikipedia is not considered a credible or authoritative source.
This is especially true considering anyone can edit the information given at any time.

Jimmy Wales in his contribution to a question asked in Quora: “What does Jimmy Wales think when a universityprofessor states not to cite Wikipedia as a source? Said the following:

“….So the real question is: what is the right way for University students to use Wikipedia?  It's great for getting yourself oriented on a topic.  It is important that students understand our strengths and weaknesses.  If we say "the neutrality of this article has been disputed" or "this section does not cite any sources" - believe us!  Dig deeper!”

Google

Google has its own technical way of reaching millions of website around the world. The websites that appear on Google are ranked using special algorithms, such as Google Panda and Google Penguin.

Website administrators use different techniques to make their website rank higher on Google search. Search Engine Optimization is a special name for the techniques to rank websites in search engines such as Google.

Therefore understand that there are many other page results on Google than the ones you see on the first page.  You can go ahead clicking numbers 2,3,3 etc to see more results. (See the picture below)

It should also be understood that Google doesn’t guarantee accuracy of the information contained in the sites you visit.

Some SEO techniques may be used to bring the pages on Google high ranks but in reality the information may not be useful to you. 

Conclusion

Your own carefulness is needed when you use Google and Wikipedia to search for information.

You should do as many references as possible or find the ‘trusted’ sites. Not everything written on the internet is true or helpful hence don’t believe everything you find on the internet.

Photos: wikipedia.org and google.com