How to Find Great Sites

We are living in the Information Age, giving us instant access to an unlimited storehouse of information at our fingertips. Unfortunately, we often have to dig through a lot of clutter to find those bits of gold.

Not any more. This article will show you how to spot the gold and find the best web sites on any topic.

Our first tool is Technorati. Technorati is the premiere search engine for finding blogs. As of April 2007, Technorati indexed over 75 million weblogs. Fortunately, they have created ways to find the most popular sites among these.

First, you must type in your search query in the search box at the top of the page. You will then be given thousands of results. You can then organize these by authority to find the best results. At the top of the page you will see a drop-down menu that will allow you to choose which authority you want to look for in your search results: “any authority”, “a little authority”, “some authority”, or “a lot of authority”. Choose “a lot of authority”.

You will now be given a list of sites beginning with the ones that are highest in popularity.
You can also find great blogs by looking at the list of Top 100 Blogs in Technorati.

Del.icio.us is another great tool for finding some of the best sites on the Web. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that allows you to store, share, and discover web bookmarks.

Del.icio.us allows you to save all of your favorite websites and tag them with descriptive labels for future reference.

Links within del.icio.us become popular when lots of people begin to save and tag the same web page.

To find great web sites, go to http://del.icio.us/popular/ and type in your search query in the top search box on the left-hand corner. Press enter and you will be given a list of the most popular web pages that have been tagged with
that term.

Using this one simple technique, I am able to find some of the very best sites and information on any topic of my choice.

You can view today’s most popular entries at http://del.icio.us/popular

StumbleUpon is another tool that will help you find great sites based on your specified preferences. StumbleUpon gives you a toolbar button that you can use while browsing the Web. Any time you click Stumble!, you will be taken to a popular web site that matches your personal preferences.

If you are looking for a comprehensive list of the very best websites on the Web, then you can check out the New York Public Libraries Best of the Web .

They provide a complete resource of content-rich,well-designed websites categorized by topic. Categories include Arts & Humanities, Business & Finance, Children’s Resources, Community Information, Computers & the Internet,Education, Employment, Government & Law, Health & Medicine, History & Social Sciences, Science & Technology, and references for almanacs, biographies, dictionaries, encyclopedia, statistics, weather, and so much more.

If you’re looking for a top-notch site on a particular topic, then I would highly suggest that you check out Best of the Web.

And lastly, we have Forbes.com Best of the Web , where you can find over 3,000 sites reviewed by Forbes.com. Each of the sites are selected based on five criteria: Content, Design, Speed, Navigation and Customization.

If you are looking for the best of the best, they even have what’s called Forbes Favorites that are marked at the beginning of each category.

I think you will find many a golden nugget here. Check it out at http://www.forbes.com/bow/

Kim Roach is a productivity junkie who blogs regularly at The Optimized Life, where you can find great information about personal growth , time management, motivation, and success.