What Should I Do about Websites with Ads?

Websites with ads should not necessarily be avoided, but need to be handled with care.

The presence of ads on a website can actually tell you a lot about what kind of site it is. Pay attention to details like what kind of ads are present. If the ads are geared towards readers in a particular field or occupation, you can determine the target audience of the website. Knowing the target audience is a helpful step in determining the appropriateness of the source for your own research. Also, refer back to the section above for tips on determining the reliability of a website. For example, an actual journal website is very reliable, even though ads may be present.

If you can, try to figure out who has paid for the article or website. You can do this by looking at copyright information and the acknowledgements section (if there is one) of the article/website. If a drug company, for example, has paid for the research behind an article, there may be ads for that company’s products on the article’s website.

Also note what the main focus of the website is. Is the article content the focus of the website, or is the site trying to direct readers to something else? As always, avoid websites with pop-up ads, as many of these are scams and can lead to unintentionally downloading viruses, spyware, adware, malware, etc. to your computer.