If you plan to use information from a website, you need to make sure the website has credibility. If you consider the following questions, you should be able to find credible, authoritative, useful websites.

1. Does this website have information that is useful for your subject? Or is the information merely on a tangent from your subject?
   • For example, a site selling welding tools may not have a great deal of information on the actual process of welding; instead, it may just list the prices for various torches. This would be an example of a site that is on a tangent from your subject. On the other hand, a website that describes welding techniques might be just the site for you.
2. Who produced this website? Is this an individual or an organisation that knows what they're talking about?
   • What credentials (degrees, training, professional experience, etc.,) does the creator have? Look for the qualifications of the website creators on the website and in standard print references in the library. Check for the domains (.gov, org., .edu sites are usually reliable since they are from the government, non-profit organisations, or educational institutions; .net sites may be individuals or organisations so be careful with these; and .com sites are businesses so they are usually trying to “sell” you something—a product, a service, or an idea).
3. Does the creator of the website have an axe to grind? That is, is the creator biased in some way?
   • If this site is created by a business, the owner wants you to buy his products or services, so he is probably not going to discuss his competitor’s products, for example.
4. Why did the creator of the site develop the site? Is it to provide general information, to sell a product, to act as a kind of " fan club" ?
   • This question is related to the previous two. If the writer has an educational purpose, the site will tend to be more reliable in the accuracy of its information and unbiased in its comments. On the other hand, if the writer is selling products or services, there might be a tendancy to overstate the value of the products or services. The “fan club” site may not be trying to sell anything, but you need to check the creator’s credentials to ensure the information is accurate as sometimes “fan club sites” may play fast and loose with objectivity and fairness in their enthusiasm about their subject.
5. How old is the site? How current is the information?
   • If the site was created several years ago and has not been updated recently, the information may be out of date and unreliable for current use. Very often on the home page of the site the creation date and most recent revision date will be mentioned at the bottom. Another way to check if the site is a good one is to look at the counter. If the site has had many visitors, sometimes this means that many people may have found it to have useful and accurate information.
6. How "elegant " is the site? That is, is it easy to make links, do the graphics provide information rather than just decoration, is the information useful?
   • If it is difficult to make links, or the graphics just make the site “pretty” without providing solid information, this may not be a very useful site for your needs. Many personal sites of individuals are like this, as are some commercial sites. Conversely, many educational sites are not very “pretty”, but they are quite “elegant” because they have easy links and useful graphics.
7. How easy is the site to use? That is, does it take a long time to load, does it require extra plug-ins to view it, etc.,?
   • If a site takes a long time to load, you may not want to use it often, so even if it has good information, it may not be the best site for you. Moreover, if it requires you to download a lot of other plug-ins (software such as Windows Media Player, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Quicktime, etc.,) in order to be able to read the information in the site, this makes the site harder to read, and, again, it may not be the best site for you.