Evaluating Websites

Try these steps on one of the websites you used yesterday to see if it were a good source of information. 

The following was taken from:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

Techniques for Web Evaluation :

1. Find out what other web pages link to this page.

a. Use alexa.com:

Type or paste the URL into alexa.com's search box.

Click on the "Get details" button.

You will see, depending on the volume of traffic to the page:

·       Traffic details.

·       Contact/ownership info for the domain name.

·       "Related links" to other sites visited by people who visited the page.

·       Sites linking in to the page.

b. Do a link: search in Google, Yahoo!, or another search engine where this can be done:

1. Copy the URL of the page you are investigating (Ctrl+C in Windows).

2. Go to the search engine site, and type link: in the search box.

3. Paste the URL into the search box immediately following link: (no space after the colon).

The pages listed all contain one or more links to the page you are looking for.

If you find no links, try a shorter portion of the URL, stopping after each /.
Note: Different search engines give very different results for "link:" searches. We suggest trying more than one.

2. Look up the title or publisher of the page in a reputable directory that evaluates its contents (ipl2, Infomine, About.com, or a specialized directory you trust). 

3. Look up the author's name in Google or Yahoo!

For the most complete results in Google, search the name three ways:

a. without quotes:  Firstname Lastname

b. enclosed in quotes as a phrase:  "Firstname Lastname"

c. enclosed in quotes with * between the first and last name:  "Firstname * Lastname" (The * can stand for any middle initial or name in Google only).