Website does not look professionally designed
Lack of citations or links to verifiable information
No author/organization is listed, either on the main page or in an 'About Us' section
The page's purpose is to sell something
There is a lot of advertising on the page
The publisher is promoting a specific point of view
The University of Michigan has a libguide dedicated to checking fake news and bias in media and yourself.
With resources like Google at our fingertips, information isn't hard to find. What is challenging is determining whether that information is credible and can be trusted. Is it factual? Biased? Relevant to your topic?
A Google search is often our first stop to gain a basic understanding of the main ideas about a topic, but since anyone with access to a computer can publish anything online, it is crucial that you evaluate the information you find, especially when completing a research paper, or looking for important information (like health or financial information).
Web sources can be particularly hard to evaluate, so we've developed this handy acronym to help you determine if a source may be CRAP.
