What Is a “Good” Site?

Before we can talk about how to distinguish “good” from “bad” sites, we need to know what makes a site good. The difference between good and bad sites is partly a matter of opinion, but there are also some objective criteria that we use.

A good site:

Has clear and appropriate authorship. In a good site, it is obvious who has created the site. Often times, joke sites and sites authored by organizations with a political or social agenda will go to great lengths to conceal who they are, or to make it look like someone else is presenting the information. In addition, the author should have expertise about the topic: a medical site authored by a grade–school student is probably less reliable than one authored by a licensed MD. If you are suspicious, you can always run a query on a search engine (like http://www.google.com) to see if other information about the author is available.

States its goals upfront. What is the purpose of the web site? Is it trying to present information about an organization or a person? Is it trying to sell a product? In a good site, it will be obvious why the site exists. Often there will be an “About” section explaining the site and the reason for its creation.

Provides good references that check out. This might be the number one way to identify a good site. Good sites always provide references where you can check the information they present. The references may be links to other web sites, but often they will be for print materials. If you are unsure about a site's reliability, be sure to check the references. While many unreliable sites provide references, if you actually check them you will find that the references do not check out (either they do not exist, or they do not say what the web site says they say).

Presents information appropriate to the topic. This is the most obvious point, but also the most important! If the web site does not have useful information, then it is not a good web site.

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