How do you know if a website is legitimate? A search in Google can return thousands, even millions of results. Are they all good? Should you use them? The URLs themselves give hints regarding their authenticity.
.com: .com's are commercial sites. It's possible that they can provide you with quality information, but their main purpose is to make money.
.org: A .org is the website of an organization. An organization may or may not be a credible resource, and has the potential to be strongly biased, depending on what the organization is working towards.
.edu: A .edu is the site of an educational institution. Miami.edu, for example, is the web address of the University of Miami. .edu addresses are generally reliable. The .ac ending is similar to the .edu ending. .ac stands for "academic" and is sometimes used in international institutions of learning.
.gov: .gov websites are government owned and run websites. They are generally reliable resources. WhiteHouse.gov, for example, is the website of the White House. State.gov is the website of the Department of State.
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