Searching |Evaluation | Ethical Use

Evaluating Resources on the Web

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Tip #6: Is the information FRESH?

Questions to ask:

  • How recently was the page published or updated?
  • Does the date of publication affect the reliability of the information?
  • Does the date the document was last updated affect the reliability of the information?
  • How accurately can you determine the date of publication or updating?

Why?

It is important to know whether the information you have found is fresh or outdated. Much information on the web is not updated after it is originally published, and it is harder to determine when web information was published or updated.

Determine how important is it that your presentation use up-to-date information. If the subject is ancient history, then recent changes to the subject matter may not be important or even available.

How?

Look at the bottom of a web page to see if the author has indicated when the page was last updated. Authors and web-masters typically put update information there. If you are using Firefox or Chrome, you can use the "Page Info" option under the Tools or View menu to see information about when the document was last modified on the server where it resides. You can also use our Metadata Wizard which will return date information for html pages. Pages that end in .php or .asp (and others) will be the date and time when the server retrieved the information--the timestamp when you interacted with the server by clicking a button.

Example:

This page was last updated on May 25, 2019. Because digital searching changes as changes are made to search engines such as Google, it is important this information is kept up to date.