What makes Snopes a reliable resource?

Snopes has been answering questions on the internet for more than two decades (since before Google existed, even) and millions of readers are still consulting us every week.

We like to think our portfolio of work speaks for itself. But we wouldn’t be particularly reliable fact-checkers if we didn’t corroborate that.

In a profile on BBC News, Snopes is described as “the go-to bible for many fact-checkers.”

“I haven’t done a paper in the past 10 years that I haven’t also checked to see what Snopes had to say about it first,” Patricia Turner, professor of folklore at UCLA, told the Los Angeles Times. “Anything that raises hairs on the back of my neck, I go to Snopes.”

“Do the Snopes.com articles reveal a political bias?” wrote FactCheck.org. “We reviewed a sampling of their political offerings, including some on rumors about George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, and we found them to be utterly poker-faced.”

And in 2019 Popular Mechanics included Snopes on its list of “The 50 Most Important Websites of All Time.”

(Find more media coverage here.)

Of course, we don’t expect anyone to accept us as the ultimate authority on any topic. No single source, no matter how reliable, is infallible. Anyone can make mistakes. Or get duped. Or have a bad day at the fact-checking bureau.

However, unlike so many anonymous individuals who create and spread unsigned, unsourced messages across the internet, we show our work on Snopes.com. Research materials used in the preparation of any fact check are listed so that readers who wish to verify the validity of our information may check those sources for themselves. Just click the “Sources” button at the bottom of an article.

Feeling skeptical? That’s probably a good sign. Keep looking for more information. We will, too.

See something we missed? Contact us.