Looking for REAL information

There are always stories of people finding information on the Internet and then losing lots of money because the information was false and they ended up being defrauded. There are sites on the Internet which have fun in fooling readers. Look at http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html and read about tree octopuses.

So how do we find out if the information is REAL information? There is a way, and below we outline four steps which will help you sort out how real the information is.

Step 1 Read the URL

The URL is the shorthand title for the address of the web page. The URL for the BBC site is http://www.bbc.co.uk . The URL can tell us a lot about a web site. For example a web site that ends with .ac.uk means that the originator of the information is from a University in the UK. This can give it some credibility. The .co.uk ending indicates that it comes from some company. These bits which end a web site address are called extensions.

The extensions you will come across are likely to be one of the following ".com", ".co.uk", ".ac.uk", ".org", ".gov.uk". Which site they are more likely to trust? Obviously the .gov.uk and the .ac.uk but don’t worry most of the .org sites are OK. The Birmingham Grid for Learning is http://www.bgfl.org.

You have to investigate the site and the best way to do this is to look at the Home page.

Step 2 Examine the content.

Try asking these questions about the web site you are looking at.

Is the information on the site helpful? Yes / No
Does the site have more resources and links? Do the links work? Yes / No
Is the site up-to-date? Can I tell when it was last updated? Yes / No
Is the information correct? Yes / No
Are the facts different from information I have found elsewhere? Yes / No

These will give you a superficial view of the content. Probably one of the most important features of any web page is the author. This is dealt with in the next section. You could however quickly look at the web site and see if there is an About us, Background, Biography section. Having this information gives the content some validity.

Another important feature of the content is the links that it contains to other web sites. If so
• Are the links well chosen, well organized, and/or evaluated/annotated?
• Do the links work?
• Do the links represent other viewpoints?
• Do the links (or absence of other viewpoints) indicate a bias?

Step 3 Ask about the Author

One way to find out the owner of a web site is to go to Who is? at http://www.easywhois.com.

At this site you are asked to enter the domain name and the number in the right hand box. Make sure you enter the domain name, NOT the http:// and www.

Step 4 Look at the external Links

These are probably the most important feature in validating the web site. Who has linked to it? Why have they linked to it? This is different from the links on the web site itself. In this section you need to find the number of other web sites that have linked to the web site you are using. If there are a large number then this could be a validating feature.

To find the external links to a site go to http://alexa.com/ and click on Traffic Rankings. Enter the web site address and examine the data.

Alternatively you could go to AltaVista and type in link:web address + host:edu making sure that you enter the web address! This will give you the number of US universities that have linked to the site. You can then change the extension to ac to find the number of UK universities or sch to find the schools that have linked to your resource, or try an alternative extension.

 

 

 

 

 

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