Skip to Main Content

Key research skills

Build Your Skills

Use this worksheet to determine whether a website is:

  • accurate
  • credible
  • reliable
  • suitable for your research needs

Evaluating URLs

Clues about a website's reliability can be found in its URL.

Ask: what domain does the website belong to?

A few are listed below:

.com – commercial, anyone can buy these

.net – network, anyone can buy these

.org – organization, original intended for non-profits, now anyone can buy

.edu – education, US colleges and universities

.mil – US military only

.gov – US government only 

.it – one of lots of country codes, many of which can be sold for commercial purposes

Assessing Websites

assessing websites - investigate the quality and value of websites.

The Web is constantly expanding with information...

  • The massive amount of information that continues to grow
  • The fact that anyone can post anything and there is no control of authorship
  • No standards to ensure reliability of information

The Solution...Determine that the information is:

  • Current
  • Relevant
  • Accurate
  • Authorship
  • Purpose

Google Search-Evaluating Results