Online Search Engines Used By Undergraduate Students In Two Selected University In Ogun And Oyo States, Nigeria.

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the types of Online search engines used by undergraduate students in Nigerian Universities. The sample comprised one hundred and fifty one (N-151) undergraduate students of two selected universities in Ogun and Oyo States. Data were collected from the participants with a self-structured validated questionnaire. Results were obtained through descriptive statistics of simple percentage, mean, standard deviation and ANOVA were used to test the formulated hypotheses at 0.005 significance level. The findings revealed that the most famous search engines were Google and yahoo. The study also revealed the major ways in which undergraduate students felt that improvement is required so as to increase knowledge of online search engines that includes reduction of information overload during browsing and also reduction in the cost of using search engines for students. Based on these findings, it was recommended that Librarians should provide knowledge about different online search engines to undergraduate students and not just Google and Yahoo through user education.