Internet research often produces a large number of documents. Some of these documents may not be relevant or reliable. Below are some criteria to consider when reviewing and evaluating Internet documents.

• Source of the document. Is it reliable? What is its bias? One quick way to check the source is looking at the web address: .edu (school or university), .gov (government body), .com (business or general site), .org (non-profit organization).
• Relevance of the document’s title.
• Author of the document.
• Date of the document.
• Relevance of the excerpt (shown in the list of search results on search engines), and location of search terms.
• Rank of the documents in the search results list. (CAUTION: Don’t rely too much on the ranking system. Sometimes the treasure is buried.)
• Avoid duplicate documents.
• Use the “Search within Results” function. Google.com and Altavista.com have this option.