Even being a very experienced web surfer, I sometimes find that I m getting to websites which bring no value to me. They always pop-up to show how much garbage the Internet contains and how much work the internet society has to do to filter them out.
Let's not speak of "why" these sites exist and what are their purpose, let's just focus on how to differentiate between good and bad websites well. This post does not pretend to be a complete guide to selecting good websites but all the very simple tips provided here greatly help me quickly determine if I should trust the content of a website or not.
The tips below are good indicators of unknown and "bad" websites. Please take into account I say "unknown" first because if the website you are going to read was recommended by your friend or colleague, there is usually no need to suspect it to be bad.
However, before opening an unknown website in your browser, please make sure that all said below is false, and you are most likely to visit a website with useful and valuable content.
* If the website contains dashes ("-") somewhere in its domain name, it is possibly aggressively marketed. The good reason of aggressive marketing is earning another penny, so I may assume the website is actively selling rather providing the useful information I am looking for.
* If the website contains an ad at the very beginning of the text on a page (left-hand side) - this usually (but not always, of course) means that the content of the page is stolen from another site(s), and maybe is "optimized" for web robots, so there is no guarantee it is readable and useful enough to spend your time studying its contents.
* If the website's content excerpt appears on a search results page as gibberish, there is no need to click on its well-formed title: it's quite clear that you will be shown that gibberish on a target page or will even be redirected to another site from which the target site tends to profit.
* Another good indicator of site's authority is its domain name. Serious brands and useful informational resources usually have shorter and more descriptive domain names than "garbage" sites. Good examples of branded sites are the website of Samsung Corp. or LG Electronics Corp. Good examples of trusted informational sources are Google News, Yahoo! News. Their domain names do not read like "www.buy-best-cheapest-viagra-online.com", right? And that's why we trust them.
Of course, there are many other good sites having less "professionally-looking" domain name, and which we can also trust, but usually the length of the domain name is in reverse proportion to the value the website brings to its visitors.
* Of course, one of the most important differences between good and bad sites is the pop-up windows. If the site is actively trying to open a pop-up window on its home page, it means you will most likely not find anything useful there than a bunch of ads.
* Look at how the website describes its content in the title. If the title just lists popular words and phrases, it is most likely to represent a "garbage" site as you can not clearly understand the site's purpose from the headline.
To my mind, these are the main indicators of bad websites. I will collect more and update this list, but for the first time these should be quite enough to make your choice.
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