Criteria
for Evaluating Internet Documents
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.
