Although many people first go to the Web for information, it is not always the best place for what you need. The Web is a good tool for finding information, but it is usually not the best place to begin academic research.

Most information on the Web does not go through an academic review process.
Anyone can publish on the Web without passing the content through an editor. Pages might be written by an expert on the topic, a journalist, a disgruntled consumer, or they might even contain deliberately misleading information, or text that has been plagiarized from other sources.

Some information on the Web is not free.
Many web pages are free to view, but some commercial sites will charge a fee to access their information.

Information on the Web is not organized.
Some directory services, like Yahoo, provide subject lists that link to selected web sites. But there are too many web pages for any single directory service to organize and index them all.

Most information on the Web is not comprehensive.
Rarely will you be able to use a search engine on the Web to collect information about your topic from earlier decades and different types of sources.

Most information on the Web is not permanent.
Some well-maintained sites are updated with current information, but other sites may become quickly dated or disappear altogether without much, if any, notice.