Much information, particularly that which concerns the contemporary, is accurate only when published. The web can change quickly, and the owner of a site must continually update their site to maintain the integrity of the posted information. Sometimes these updates are not performed. The researcher should find the "created date" and "last edited" dates that are often posted on a website. The researcher should evaluate these dates in the context of the data presented. A discussion of ancient Greek theater created a decade ago has just as much relevance as a similar discussion posted today. However, a travel advisory created one year ago regarding travel to the country of Georgia has very little relevance compared to a travel advisory posted today given the recent Russian invasion. Another of example of the importance of the timeliness of a site in determining the quality of information can be found SearchEngineWatch. To determine the relative use of search engines, a simple Google search was performed. One the the first results is the following article: http://searchenginewatch.com/2167411 This article rates Lycos as the top search engine at 14% of all search traffic. Google is third at 7%. This article was published in 1999, is clearly out of date. After further searching, another article at SearchEngineWatch can be found: http://searchenginewatch.com/3630718 This second article correctly indicates that Google dominates web search with 61% of all searches in July, 2008. This article was published in 2008. The fact that a simple web search yielded dated information that had changed drastically since the time of posting shows how important timeliness of a source is to the quality of information provided by that source. |