Learning Online: Web Research & Copyright
How can you tell if a Web site is reliable?
There are many Web sites—but which ones are good sources of information? Which sites are reliable? When visiting Web sites to find information it is important not to take everything at face value.
- Does it seem credible?
Evaluate the credibility of the Web site itself. Review the URL. A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of a file or Web page on the Internet. For example, http://www.harpercollege.edu is the URL for the Harper College home page.
Does the site you are researching have its own domain name, such as mywebsite.com at http://mywebsite.com, or is it a free Web site consisting of just a folder of files hosted on a free Web server?
The URL of a site hosted on a free Web server usually includes part of the free Web server’s name and might begin with something such as http://www.angelfire.com/foldername/mysite or http://mysite.tripod.com. Information obtained from a Web site that has its own domain name, such as http://www.mywebsite.com, will usually (but not always) be more reliable than information obtained from a free Web site.
- What's the domain name?
Evaluate the type of domain name—is it a nonprofit organization (.org), a business (.com or .biz), an institution of higher learning (.edu)? Businesses may share information in a way that gives the business an advantage, so be careful. Nonprofit organizations or schools will sometimes provide a more objective treatment of a subject.
- How recent is the information?
Another item to look at is the date the Web page was created or last updated. While some information is timeless, very often a Web page that has not been updated for several years is outdated and not the best source of information.
Adapted from Web Development & Design Foundations, used with permission.
Harper College Library
Visit the Harper Library for more tips and for resources to help you be more productive when you search for information online.