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Cancer information on the Internet: the impact of employing specific search engines and search strategies
1The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
The Internet has become a primary source of cancer-related information; however, little is known regarding the impact associated with the use of a particular search strategy or search engine on the data generated. Four popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL) were explored over two periods, using several search terms. More than 20-fold differences were found in the total number of Internet sites identified by each search engine when the same search term was used. Relatively minor changes in search strategy, such as making the term more specific, lead to a major difference in the number of identified Web sites. For the more common malignancies, the same Web sites were initially listed by each search engine, but with rarer cancers, the initial listings varied more. Top listings may change daily, often in response to a report in the lay press. Commercial advertising strategies varied greatly among the four search engines. Within each search engine, searching for an uncommon entity provided a sharply different group of listings than that obtained with a less specific search term. It is imperative that oncologists become proactive in their approach to this rapidly expanding technology and assist their patients in their search for Web-based cancer-related information.
| Commun Oncol 2005;2:502–504 | full text |  75 kb |