CRJU 3111: American Courts

When you search the Web, you’re going to find a lot of information . . . but is it accurate and reliable? You will have to determine this for yourself, and the CRAAP Test can help. The CRAAP Test is a list of questions you can ask yourself in order to determine if the information on a web site is reliable

 CRAAP is an acronym for:

Currency - Is the material current? Does it contain outdated or disproven information? Is the site maintained regularly?

Relevance - Is the material relevant to your question?

Author - Who wrote the content? What are the author's qualifications? Is there a way to contact the author?

Accuracy - How accurate is the information? What evidence does the author use? Does the author cite sources?

Purpose - What is the purpose of the content? Is the content objective or biased?

A domain name suffix (the last letters of a web address), reveal a lot about the type of website. Here are a few common domain name suffixes:

 .com - Commercial

 .org - Non-profit

 .gov - Government website

 .edu - Educational

*Note: Other countries use specific domain names. For example sites that end in .ca are Canada, and sites that end in .au are from Australia.