A comparison of world wide web resources for identifying medical information

Rationale and Objectives. To compare the Utility of a search engine, Google, with other medical and non-medical, web-based resources for identifying specific medical information. Materials and Methods. This institutional review board-approved case cross-over study randomly assigned 89 medical student volunteers to use either Google or any other web-based resource (excluding Google) to research 10 advanced medical questions in a multiple choice exam. Primary outcome measures were resource efficiency (inversely related to number of links used to identify the correct answer for each question) and correctness (number of correct answers/total number of questions answered). For Google searches, the sites providing the information in question were also evaluated. Results. The most frequently selected non-Google resources were Yahoo (n = 531), Ask.com (n = 110). and the interactive encyclopedia Wikipedia.com (n = 74). Google was more efficient than all other resources (1.50 vs. 1.94 mean links, P < .0001), with no significant difference in correctness (97% [756/780] vs. 96% [747/780], P = .16). After a Google search. the four most common categories of sites that provided the correct answer were dictionary/encyclopedia sites, medical websites, National Library of Medicine resources. or journal websites. Yahoo was less efficient than Google (1.90 vs. 1.54 mean links. P < .0001). However, non-Google search engines were more efficient than web sites (eg, Wikipedia, medical websites) and PubMed (1.87 vs. 2.54 mean links, P = .0004). Conclusion. Google is an efficient web resource for identifying specific medical information, by guiding users to an array of medical resources.