What to ask yourself: 5 basic questions

• Who is responsible for the site? Is there an author? Can you determine the producer's credentials, qualifications?
  
• What type of site is it? Is the site sponsored by a group or organization? If so, does the group advocate a certain philosophy?
  
• When was the site created or updated? Is there a date? Is it up-to-date?
• Where can you find more information? Look for a name and email. Is the source of factual or attributed information well documented? Are the links reliable, and evaluated in any way?
• Why was this site created? Is there any bias evident in the site? Is the site trying to sell a product?

• Strategies for checking who wrote the page and their qualifications:
  Look for a name/email at the bottom, in "About us" or "Contact us". The author is usually not the webmaster. To learn more, try truncating a part at a time of the URL (stopping just before the slash) and pressing enter to see origins of the site.
• Strategies for what the URL can tell you:
  .edu in the address = education site
  .org in the address = nonprofit organization site
  .gov in the address = government site
  .net in the address = network/utilities site
  .mil in the address = military site
  .com in the address = commercial site
  The publisher in general is the agency or person operating the "server" computer from which the document is issued (like //www.ctt.bc.ca).
  For somebody's personal page, the server may be a commercial ISP or other provider of web page hosting like aol.com - and look for a personal name (like barker) following a ~ symbol or the word "users" or "people".
• Strategies for locating date of web page:
  Look at the bottom usually. Also, you can right click and look under View / Page Info. Consider looking at other pages from this site by truncating back the URL. Be cautious about undated factual or statistical information.
• Stategies for checking reliability of a source:
  Look for awards or links to "Awards" page and check them out. Use Google to see who links to the page by preceding the URL by "link:" in the search box, like link:www.linnbenton.edu. How well is the site maintained? Are new sites or entries so designated? NOTE: In news stories in particular, being most recent does not guarantee that the information is more accurate.
• Strategies for checking for bias of web page:
  Look for links to "Sponsors", "About us", "Philososphy". Advertisers can also be sponsors so check that the points of view given show a range of opinion and are not bent to keep/attract advertisers. Try to think of alternative versions/viewpoints... are they evident or linked to? Look for your own bias. Are you being objective, fair?
• Strategies for evaluating the clarity (organization, legibility) of the web page:
  Consider if the information is well-written, clearly presented, logical. The graphics should add to the content not distract. There should be no mistakes in spelling or word usage.