10 Thoughts to Effectively Evaluate a Website

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I had recently found an article on the web discussing key points for evaluating a website. These points are important for internet users as a whole due to the unwarranted biases and ill opinions seemingly occurring on a more frequent level on the web.

Without taking the proper steps to correct evaluation, one may misjudge a website for either a scam or a fraud, or perhaps even the opposite, a legitimate site, which in either case, you could be far from the truth.

Distinguishing between relevant and scam websites online can be difficult so provided are some questions to ask yourself before making up your mind:

1. What is the purpose of the site?
   Be careful when you answer this to yourself and take some time to see what the site has to offer.

   Other questions you may want to ask yourself along with this is, does this site contain more advertisements than content? Does this site contain original, well thought, content? Or perhaps, does this website contain any entertainment value?

   Seek the statement the website wishes to portray, then ask yourself these questions and evaluate upon the purpose of the site.

2. Who developed / sponsored the site?
   Occasionally this information is in the source code rather than displayed on the screen. Some sites have corporate or institutional authors. This can also help define the purpose of the site and can provide insight on if its content is legitimate.

3. Is there a bias to the site?
   Biases will often mislead the reader by providing extreme ideas used for influencing the readers thoughts. You can never really capture the whole picture with biased content — which means youll fall short of reading the truth.

4. What are the goals / objectives of the developer / sponsor?
   Determine the goals and objectives of the developer / sponsor. Is this person genuinely trying to provide great content/services to satisfy the reader? Or have you noticed them “taking the easy route” to draw in consumers?

5. Is the information provided well-documented?
   Are sources or links to sources given? Beware of authoritative sounding information that lacks sources.

6. Is the page signed?
   When the web was new most pages were signed by individual authors or developers. Now, most commercial & institutional pages have a corporate logo, or some indication of affiliation, but not necessarily a persons name. Personal pages should be signed. Beware of pages without any identification of origin.

7. Can you contact the developer (individual or institution) of the site or page?
   Feedback for any website is vital for its success and its growth. If there is no means of easily contacting the site then they are definitely missing the whole picture of designing web sites.

8. When was the site last updated? Is the information current?
   This question is pretty self-explanatory. Nobody wants old information that is no longer of any value. And of course nobody wants to be mislead by old information thinking its of any value.

9. What are the authors or institutions credentials?
   How credible is this site? Is it well known? How well have others received the website? These are all things to ask yourself when you see a website. One way to help determine this would be to do a google search for the authors name or the web site itself.

10. How did you find the website?
    Did you find the website from a credible source? Did a friend tell you about it? How you found a site may help in determining the quality of a site.