Purpose
A good website is one that has a clear purpose. You should be able to go to a site and immediately tell why the site was put together. Was it to inform you? Is it trying to sell you something?
Possible purposes include:
| Commercial | Retail sites such as eBay or Amazon | |
| Informative | News sites, government pages, weather, etc | |
| Educational | Sites for students and teachers | |
| Entertainment | The sites you visit just for fun | |
| Persuasive | Opinion sites, political and religious sites | |
| Personal | Personal web pages and blogs | |
| Institutional | University and charity sites | |
| Hoaxes | Scam sites that may ask for personal information. Could also be sites created for fun with no intent on harm. |
When doing research online, you want to look for informative or educational websites. Sites that are meant to entertain or share opinions don't always contain factual information. Try to stay away from sites with no clear purpose.
Examples
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| Historian, research, lecturer, author and speaker Charles Otman discusses nanotechnology, nanobiology, the Internet, bioconvergence, synthetic sentience and many, many other confusing topics. | This .gov site mixes disaster information with entertainment. It uses a popular TV show to discuss emergency preparedness. |
