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educational institution: Even though a page comes from an educational institution, it does not mean the institution endorses the views expressed there. Students or faculty members may publish personal pages in their account on the school's computer. You will have to look closely at the page to decide whether or not it is reliable. |
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commercial entity: Many companies advertise and sell products, as well as publish annual reports and other company information on the Web. With the exception of corporate sites that provide information about their own companies, most commercial sites are not appropriate for college-level research. |
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federal government: Government agencies use the Web to publish legislation, census information, weather data, tax forms, research reports, statistics, and many other documents. Government websites provide some of the most valuable and trustworthy information on the Web. |
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non-profit organization: Non-profit organizations come in all shapes and sizes. Some non-profits provide reliable and scholarly information and statistics, while other groups provide misleading or blatantly false information. It depends on the mission of the group. As with .edu, you must closely examine non-profit websites to determine whether or not the information presented is reliable. |
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network provider: This group is an odd mix of companies, associations and Internet Service Providers. Information on these sites can look similar to sites from .com, .org, or even personal pages. |
Recently the division between these top-level domains became blurred. Sometimes non-profit organizations and educational institutions are now found under .com or .net. This makes it more difficult to determine what kind of organization is publishing the page.
The number of top-level domain names is increasing. New domain names include .museum, .info, and .biz. The origin of some international sites can be determined by country codes found in the URL.
