Once you get started learning about your disease using the sources here, you may decide you want to find more sources. To make sure you use reputable sources, we offer these tips for searching on your own.

• Anyone can set up a website. If they know how to optimize the site to appeal to search engines, they can even get it to show up near the top of your search results. That’s getting harder, but it’s still very doable. Be careful about the sites you trust.
• Federal government sites are excellent. very authoritative sites. For cancer information, the National Cancer Institute is one of the best. Of course, we link to it whenever possible.
• Big universities, especially research universities, often post reliable information, especially about research that their faculty has recently finished.
• Well-known health organizations are also great sources. Keep in mind that some non-profits are associated with commercial companies and may be influenced by them. This does not mean that they are necessarily unreliable, but it’s a good idea to look for confirmation, unless you are sure the organization does not get its information from commercial interests.
• Always check the latest revision date on the page. For many diseases where there’s a lot of ongoing research the information can change quickly. The page you’ve found may be an old one. Even on a government site. Many of the best sites will include a posting or revision date. It’s often somewhere near the bottom of the page.
• The more specific your search, the more likely you’ll find information on exactly the topic you need. For example, if you want to find local support groups for Hodgkin Lymphoma in Cortez, Colorado, that’s what you’d type into the search engine: hodgkin lymphoma support group cortez colorado. Since Cortez is pretty small, it may not have its own support group. You might need to try: hodgkin lymphoma support group montezuma county colorado. But search engines are pretty smart these days and know that Cortez is in Montezuma County, and they’ll show the county results along with city results.
• Often sites we link to will have more information than just the page we recommend. Sometimes the page will have links to more information. If not, you can use the site’s search function just like you would a regular search engine. The difference is, it will show you results only from that site.