8 Ways to Determine Website Reliability
There are two ways you can go on this subject. There are reliable websites, ones that offer a service that works. And, there are reliable websites that offer information you can trust. Now, if we are honest, you can never 100% trust anything you read on the internet because even the government web pages on health issues are written by the lowest bidder. Nevertheless, whether you are looking for a website that works or a website that has the information you can trust, here are a few tips to help you.
1 – Try Out the Website in a Small Way
The first thing you can do is try out the website in a small way, perhaps in a way that puts you at minimum risk. You could perhaps try a free trial or make a small purchase. Even if you are going to the website for information and you want to know if the information is legit, you can simply try it out a little. For example, if you are researching SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and you are not sure if you are reading true information, you can cross-check it with other websites, but ultimately, you should try some of the information in real life to see if it works.
2 – Try a Website Checking/ Scam Tracking Extension
There are spam, virus, and reputation checking websites on the internet that you can use to track down reliable and unreliable companies. Take a service or extension like Web Paranoid
where they have people working night and day to find scammers and poor-quality information. They work so hard to find bad services and unreliable websites so you don’t have to.
3 – Commercial Websites Are Okay
A website that is operated by a company that sells lawn mowers is going to try to sell you a lawn mower. However, it stands to reason that they know and understand the topic of lawnmowers. Just because they are trying to sell you something, it doesn’t mean you can’t trust the information on their website. When you are buying products from bigger brands, then you are often safer. They care more about their reputation, and so are less likely to rip you off individually. Sure, they may pull a trick on their entire customer base at one time, like asking for a credit card and rolling free trials into paid subscriptions. But, on an individual level, they are less likely to rip you off.
4 – Trusting a Popular Service
Take a company like PayPal. If they spent as much time working on their fees as they did virtue signaling throughout the internet, they may have a more appealing product. Nevertheless, they are popular, you see them on lots of website checkouts, so you can probably trust them. Though with that said, when well-known banks are going bust, it is understandable if you don’t trust a popular service.
5 – How Easy is the Transaction or Information
Take something like Wikipedia and how easy it is to get the information you want. Take a website like Amazon where it is very easy to get the product you want. When something is good and reliable, it is often because the creators tried to make the content or service as easy as possible for customers and viewers to use.
6 – Where is the Website Based?
There is no guarantee that the American address on the website is a real one. Nevertheless, if a company is operating in your country, then getting things like a refund is a little easier. If the company is not based in your own country, then treat them with caution.
7 – Authors Don’t Mean Anything
Don’t be fooled just because the piece you are reading has an author because those author panels are not created to be honest. They are created to offer the most appealing web content and authority signals to search engines.
8 – Ask Friends on Social Media
If you were asking for insurance services, then asking semi-strangers on social media is a bad idea. However, if there is a particular website that is troubling you, then get in touch with a few strangers and see if they have anything to say. If the company has screwed them over in some way, then these strangers will be more than willing to tell you about it.
