If you feel like you are being bombarded with website options when you are looking for information and you don’t know where to turn, you are not alone. There are a lot of people putting information on the web, some are putting out good information, while others are not.

When you go to a website there are some basic questions you can ask yourself to help figure out if it is a good site or not. First, look at the author. If you can’t even find this information then you should move on to the next site. Once you find out who created the page, verify their information and background. This is very important if you are using the internet for research. If you can’t verify who they are, you should probably look further.

You can also look for the last time the information was updated, or when the last time the page was updated. This is more important in some instances than others. If you are researching a history paper, the information does not necessarily need to be created within the last few months. If you are researching a current events project, you don’t want to write a paper about something that happened two years ago.

Does the information and the flow of the website make sense? This sometimes takes a very critical eye. When you look at the page is the information on it clear and organized? If you feel like you are skipping all over the place without really learning anything, you should probably move on to a different site.  You should also make sure that the information within the site does not contradict itself.

Look at the advertising. Although this is not a sure sign of a spam website, it is important to look at the number of ads on a page. If you are having trouble finding content within all the ads, the site may only exist to make money.