Keep these ABCs in mind as you review websites for quality:

Authority

Is the website's author listed along with his/her credentials?  Usually a URL with .edu .org or.gov is more reliable than.com. and .net

Bias

Is the website objective, presenting both sides of an issue? Or, is the information presented to sway the audience to a particular point of view?  Who is the audience?  A certain political group, adults, children, researchers?  Depending on your purpose for using the website, the intended audience needs to be taken into consideration.

Currency

Is the website current, providing the 'created' date and 'last updated' information?

Note: One or more of the ABCs may be more important in evaluating a website, depending on the information you need.  Example: medical & scientific information usually needs to be current.  If you are trying to take a stand on an issue, a biased database may be acceptable as long as it is coming from a reliable source (authority).

You know the extensions at the very end of website domain names?  The .com, .edu, .org, etc.? Well, those are called Top Level Domains (TLD).

During the 1990s as the internet as a network started to grow, there were only seven TLDs:

.com.  (originally meant just for for-profit companies, but became something anyone could use)

.org   (originally meant to be for charities or nonprofit organizations to provide valuable information for a specific purpose; now a more  miscellaneous category, used by some orgs, but not restricted to just them - this one has been used by everything from regular NGOs - to white supremacist organizations putting up sites about Matin Luther King Jr in order to propagate calumny.

.net   (anyone could use it)

.int   (just for to organizations, offices, and programs endorsed by a treaty between two or more nations)

.edu   (restricted to accredited secondary educational institutions)

.gov   (restricted to us government)

.mil   (just for the us dept. of defense)

In the decades since then, though, many MANY new TLDs/extensions have been created, everything from general terms, to specific company names or brand names. Some are restricted to a certain type of use, some are not.  See the LONG list here (wikipedia).

The point being, when you know a domain extension is restricted to one entity to use (like universities and colleges, the government, or the military) that can be reassuring, as it can guide you to search on websites that you know from the start are pretty reliable.

But, if you see a webpage domain name with an extension that can be used by ANYONE or, one you've never seen before...you can't just assume that the website's information is going to be reliable without looking around and checking out other things about the website (such as the ABC method listed above).