Instructors asking you to use credible sources may also use Turnitin.com to evaluate your citations to see whether you use scholarly, academic or peer-reviewed, or popular. See the box below to determine whether a source is "scholarly" or "popular."
A link or url tells you quite a bit about where the information on the page comes from and who the intended audience is. The last three letters of a url (uniform resource locator) or link will tell you a great deal about who owns a website, who writes the content and what their purpose is.
Top-level domain |
Abbreviation for: |
Who uses it | Url of example website |
.com |
commercial | commercial entities | https://www.amazon.com/ |
.edu |
education | universities and colleges | https://www.berkeley.edu/ |
.gov |
government | U.S. government | https://www.usgs.gov/ |
.net |
network | network infrastructure | https://www.slideshare.net/ |
.org |
organization | nonprofit organizations | https://www.sierraclub.org/ |
.mil |
military | U.S. military | https://www.marines.mil/ |