3. Websites evaluation

Reliability of websites

For checking the quality of websites from which data are retrieved, a first evaluation regards the nature of the website, through the domain of the site. The main types are: 

  • national; for example  an italian one .it or english one .en
  • generical; for example .com 
  • institutional: .gov for government sites

Some criteria for evaluation

A website can be observed and evaluated as a whole, by paying attention to some elements:

  • Authoritativeness: contents expressed by a certified or identifiable author 
  • Freshness: updated information
  • Content: it is objective and accurate, expressed in a linear and adequate language 
  • Originality: news and different point of view supporting a research 
  • Spendability: purposes appropriate to the user to whom it is addressed
  • Esthetics: graphic layout that is not only pleasant, but also functional to the navigation through the website 
  • Identifiable by
    • Name or logo
    • Presentation of themes it deals with;
    • Information in the footer about the site editor, updates, identification

Usability and accessibility criteria

The usability and accessibility criteria concern how to make the site accessible to the widest possible audience, and more easily navigable, even for users who do not have advanced technologies and complex software. Compliance with the usability and accessibility criteria certainly makes the website more reliable. 

On the websites of the institutional bodies they are declared among the administration documents of the site according to the Guidelines for the websites of public administrations, in terms of Accessibility, Websites, Transparency, Usability. 

The University of Florence itself states them in the document Accessibility of the websites of the University of Florence.

Criteria for the visibility of a website 

The sites that appear first are not always the most reliable and the most relevant to a search you have launched. Commercial sites make extensive use of different strategies, to make themselves more visible, even without having the scientific reliability necessary for the purposes of research, for example aimed at a degree thesis.

There are criteria to make a site more visible, in order to obtain better results in the recovery phase, when a search is made in engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc.

 We talk about search engine optimization activities = Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which serve for example:

  •  to create keywords for indexing the contents of the page
  •  to create suitable terms for the description of the images on the site page and make them searchable   
  •  to name the pdf files as closely as possible to the content expressed therein