Standard Academic Assessment Rules Apply!
Websites are no different from other academic sources when it comes to scrutiny.
Always evaluate a source you're interested in using for these criteria:
The first step in unpacking a website is determining what kind of website you're looking at.
Common types of sites include:
Some of these categories are overlapping. For example, an entertainment site might be owned by a company or corporation. A special interest group may have started a charity or a non-government organization.
Ultimately, what is the purpose of the site's owner and the site itself?
The internet is a place jam-packed with digital stuff. Not everything on the web is a "website".
We usually use "website" to mean a group of pages linked by design and navigation, owned and created by one entity.
Within websites, various documents might be included.
When you do a search, you might be accessing a document within a larger site. It's important to recognize:
You will need to know this information to be able to properly cite any web source.