Web Evaluation
It's important to evaluate websites that you rely on for information. There is a wide range of materials available online - from Xanga blogs to government reports. Below are some ways you can determine if a website contains reliable information.
Domain
Domains are found at the end of a URL. They can often tell you about the purpose of the website. Note that other countries have distinct URLs.
| domain | type of site | domain | country | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .com | commercial | .au | Australia | |
| .org | organization | .ca | Canada | |
| .gov | governmental | .nz | New Zealand | |
| .edu | educational | .uk | United Kingdom | |
| .mil | military | .za | South Africa |
.orgs (organizations) and .coms (commercial sites) can be registered by anyone. .edus and .govs are more strictly regulated, and so more reliable. Government websites are good places to find statistical information
Publisher
Some people and organizations buy their own domain and publish their own material. Musicians Timbaland and Amy Winehouse, for example, have official sites. Just because someone has registered a domain does not mean you should trust them.
Try to find out who the publishers or hosts are. Sometimes you can tell this by the name just before the domain ending. For example, from this URL, you can tell that the host is Coca Cola: http://www.coca-cola.com/template1/index.jsp?locale=en_US
You can tell who owns a site by the copyright. This is often found at the bottom of the page.
Author
Sometimes authors and publishers are the same. Other times people and organizations author material that are "hosted' elsewhere.
Some people who post material on the Web use free hosting services like Blogspot, Tripod, and Angelfire. The material on these pages is not necessarily bad, but remember that anyone could be putting this material up - kind of like digital graffiti. Take a look at this Tripod page.
Students and professors at universities can use ".edu" sites to host their personal webpages. Often times a tilde (~) will indicate a personal site. Other times there will be a slash after the domain ending indicating the name of the person. So while http://www.semo.edu/ is Southeast Missouri State University's home page, http://www.cstl.semo.edu/mwillihooper/ is a personal page for one of the instructors. The student or professor may put inaccurate information on the page that is not authorized by the organization.
To find out biographical or company information about the publisher or author of a site, look for an "about" section. If you can't find any biographical or organizational information, you should question the authority of the site.
Reputation
If you can't find any information about the author in the site itself,there are other ways to find some. Try typing the name of the organization or person in a search engine like Google. Check any news results or encyclopedia entries about the organization? Is the person listed as a member in any professional organizations? Try to determine what other people are saying about the authors.
Sometimes you may be already familiar with the author or publisher. That's a good test of reliability! You may be a loyal reader of an online publication like Slate or the Drudge Report. Since you've read them before, you are willing to trust what they publish now. You may read the Southeast Missourian or the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in print, and so you trust the online counterpart. Or you may know that an organization - like the United States Department of Agriculture - is a trustworthy source on agricultural topics.
Timeliness
How recently a webpage has been updated can affect its relevance for your project. A page written about the government of Iraq in 2000 would no longer have accurate information. Information about current events needs to be updated daily or even hourly.
Often there is an updated or modified date at the bottom of the page where the copyright is.
Content
Sometimes the visual elements of a page - excessive adverting, typos, and bad design - put you on guard and cause you to question the content of a page because the author might appear uneducated, careless, or only out for money.
Advertising is not necessarily bad. Think about the relation of the ads to the informative content. The Librarian's Internet Index is a site recommended by the librarians at Kent Library, and it has some Google ads. The primary purpose of the site, however, is not to sell these products. The product information site for the drug Gardasil does not appear to have advertisements. But bear in mind that the content is created by the makers of the drug, who are trying to convince you to buy the drug and doctors to prescribe it.
Just because a site looks nice does not mean that you should trust it. Take a look at this site about Dr. Martin Luther King. It looks good on the surface, but as you read the content, you should begin to realize that it is heavily biased. You should question content that does not agree with what you already know about a topic.