The Iffy Index of Unreliable Sources compiles credibility ratings from a variety of sources. Peer-reviewed studies, health/media guides, and mis/disinfo tools all use the Iffy Index. The main source of credibility data comes from Media Bias/Fact Check. MBFC has substantial experience, comprehensiveness, transparency, accountability, and currency in reviewing news sites.
Political leaning is not a factor. The Iffy Index includes only sites that MBFC rates as Low Credibility and categorizes as either Conspiracy/Pseudoscience or Questionable Source, as listed in the MBFC Cat column of the table below. A credibility rating of Low means the site regularly fails fact checks by IFCN-verified fact checkers. The table also lists the MBFC Factual rating, linked to the site’s MBFC page (ratings details and abbreviations in methodology).
Other columns in the table are: Site Rank from Similarweb, Misinfo.me credibility (low: -1.0 to high: 1.0), and a Wikipedia article (if one exists). The news outlet’s name is linked fact-checks of its articles.
In 2025, Iffy added several credibility factors from Wikipedia: Fake-news lists, Perennial Sources (RSP) with a ❗Warn label, and Deprecated (DEPS) domain (building off Chris Rusnick’s Veri.FYI and James Hare’s Citation Watchlist). We also added: Domain Quality scores and another Score based on MBFC’s Factual Rating (both 0.0–1.0).
Iffy Index of Unreliable Sources
Methodology
The right-column Score is derived by adding the following number values for MBFC ratings (with abbreviations):
| If MBFC rating for: | Equals: | Add: |
|---|---|---|
| Bias | fake-news (FN) | -0.1 |
| Bias | conspiracy-pseudoscience (CP) | -0.1 |
| Credibility | low (L) | 0.2 |
| Credibility | medium (M) | 0.4 |
| Credibility | high (H) | 0.6 |
| Factual Reporting | very-low (VL) | -0.1 |
| Factual Reporting | low (L) | 0.0 |
| Factual Reporting | mixed (M) | 0.1 |
| Factual Reporting | mostly-factual (MF) | 0.2 |
| Factual Reporting | high (H) | 0.3 |
| Factual Reporting | very-high (VH) | 0.4 |
Where does the Iffy index link?
The links in the MBFC Fact column go to the site’s MBFC review. The site’s name links to search results lising fact-checks of that site’s articles.
The Open University is “currently reviewing the MisinfoMe website so it has been temporarily taken offline”. We are keeping Misinfo.me credibility ratings in the table until the site returns.
What’s in Iffy?
The Iffy index lists sites with a low (or very low) MBFC Factual Reporting level. The goal is to give researchers an accurate list of active, unreliable news sources, vetted by a professional news/info-site reviewer. MBFC meets the following criteria:
- It is a team of reviewers (not just one opinion).
- It has reviewed thousands of sites.
- It accepts feedback from publishers.
- It stays current, continually rating new sites and reconsidering past ratings.
- It justifies each rating with public links to reliable sources — the same transparency expected of any news outlet.
What isn’t in Iffy?
Political leanings are not a factor. Neither Iffy nor MBFC determines a site’s credibility by its left/right bias. Failed fact-checks are what makes a site Iffy.
Where does Iffy get its info?
Iffy.news pulls the JSON data used in the MBFC browser extension. The low-credibility domains and data get stored in a public spreadsheet (view: JSON, download: JSON | CSV). The global Site Rank number in the table comes from Similarweb’s Global Site Ranking. Whois Domain Lookup supplies the Year Online (i.e., when the domain name was registered), a column in the sheet (not included in the above table).
The Iffy.news website is not affiliated with, but is inspired by, the Iffy Quotient at the University of Michigan. I, Barrett Golding, am responsible for the Iffy Index. All Iffy.news data, documents, scripts, and software are released free and open-source (MIT License and Creative Commons).
The Iffy.news Index of Unreliable Sources by Barrett Golding is licensed under CC BY 4.0
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Corrections
(The Changelog lists quarterly updates.) To have a site listed or unlisted, submit your request via the form at Media Bias/Fact Check (whose ratings Iffy.news compiles). To inform me of requested corrections, please use the form below. But remember: The list includes only sites with stories that are demonstrably false — not merely biased or partisan. Include URLs of fact-checks that demonstrate whether the site publishes fake or fact-based news.