1. Evaluating Online Information Sources Ask yourself the following questions…

2. Who is the Author?  Can you find the name of the author or creator?  Are there any credentials? Degree, title, etc  Is there contact information somewhere on the page?  Is there a link to a homepage? is it for an individual or for an organization?

3. Search the Author

4. It's also possible to measure the quality of a Website by conducting a background check on the author of a Web page. Conduct a search for the author's name, in quotation marks. Results may include other articles written by the author, articles written about the author, or Web sites that use the author's work as examples. Investigating the types of Web pages that refer to the author or the author's materials can give context to Web page contents.

5. What can you tell from the URL?  Can you tell anything about the source of the information from the domain name or URL?  Can you find out more about the URL?

6. Look closely

7. Meta-Web Information Searches and The "Link" Command A Meta-Web Information search permits users to find out what other Web sites have to say about a particular Web page or its author. Sometimes, seeing who links to - or talks or writes about - a particular Web page can offer insights into its quality. Meta- Web information searches can help to validate information on a particular Web page by showing you what kinds of Web pages link to it. You can find out which sites link to a specific Web page by going to a search engine and entering a "link:" command in the search box, followed by the Web page's address (URL). Meta search engines that integrate several different search engines will offer best results.

8. What is the purpose of the web site?  Does the site have one… if so what?  Is the site trying to inform, persuade, or sell?  Is it geared to a particular audience?

9. What do they want?

10. Many Web pages are part of other Web sites. By bring the web address down to the host's domain name, users can learn much about the purpose of the page they are visiting. For example in ``www.improb.com/archives/classical/cat/cat.html`` the domain name is ``www.improb.com``. In order to obtain a domain name, all Web sites on the World Wide Web must first register. So another quick way to assess credibility is to see who registered the Web page. Whois.net is a Web-based domain research service that provides background information relating to Web sites. When the URL or domain name for a Web site is entered into the ``Whois`` data base, all Web sites featuring that domain name will appear in the results.