Searching well and checking what you find
Computer Science · Key Stage 1 · The School
Better words, better results
Search for "dogs" and you get everything. Search for "how much exercise does a border collie need each day" and you get what you wanted. Use the words that would appear in a good answer. Searching is a skill. You are guessing what the right page would say. You are not asking a question politely.
Who wrote this, and why?
Ask three questions before you believe a page. WHO wrote it? A museum, a vet, or someone who will not give their name? WHY does it exist? To tell you something, or to sell you something? WHEN was it written? A page selling dog food is not a fair guide to how much to feed a dog, however tidy it looks.
Ranked, not true
A search engine puts results in the order it thinks is useful and popular. It does not put them in order of truth. The first result is not "the answer". Check two or three pages. If they disagree, trust the one that shows where its facts came from.
Question: how tall is the tallest tree? SEARCH A: "trees" — millions of results, none of them the answer. SEARCH B: "tallest tree" — better. SEARCH C: "tallest tree in the world height metres" — the words you want in the answer are in the question. Now check the top result: who wrote it, and does a second, unconnected site agree? If two independent sources say the same, you probably have it.