How to evaluate it

The site should include:

• The date when it was created, often stated as copyright date.
  
• The date of the last update / revision.
• Time period for collected data.
  

Not all sites will include all of these dates.

The copyright date is often stated for the whole period the site exists, e.g. 1998-2004, but there are many sites where you can only find the copyright date for the current year.

An update does not necessarily mean that the whole site was updated; it could have been only a part of the site or a change of the layout.

Keep an eye on these points:

Links
Are the links current or updated regularly?
How many dead links are on the site?
Is the information on the page outdated?

In case you find no dates:
Check the bibliography or list of references for currency.
What are the dates of the references?
Are any current publications included?
See whether there is a "news" site. Often you can tell from the date of the news how current a site is.

If you do not find a date on the first page, take a look at the other pages.

  July 15, 2004 -- http://www.library.cmu.edu/Services/Tutorials/WebEval/evaluatecurr.html
  Jean Alexander, Head of Hunt Reference, jeana@andrew.cmu.edu
  © 2004 Carnegie Mellon Libraries