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Searching For Medical And Other Information On The Internet


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#1 fishinghat

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Posted 17 October 2020 - 08:27 AM

All of us spend time doing various searches on the internet but I don't know how many of you are aware that there is major differences in the search engines. Most of us expect when we do a search that we will see all internet entries for that subject. Well one company has taken steps that lead to limited searches. Google has now had several lawsuits that have revealed that they only post items from websites that pay a few to Google. So if you want your information readily available on the internet than you must pay a fee to Google and it will be one of the first to pop up on a search for that topic.  Other information on that subject may or may not appear at Google's discretion. I have done several searches for specific medical information using several search engines and have found that about 20% more info shows up on other search engines when compared to Google. In all fairness I have not evaluated Bing so I don't know how they compare.

 

Also, in these lawsuits Google was found of collecting private information on people. Not just where they shop but personal information (birthdays, phone numbers, addresses and even more sensitive information. These lawsuits have cost Google Billions of dollars!!!

 

I have NOT done a thorough investigation onto the details of these suits so if anyone wants to do that and add clarity to my information I would encourage that.


#2 invalidusername

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Posted 17 October 2020 - 12:07 PM

The issue here Hat is that Google is a business, as are any other search engines. They have to make money. If all they did was provide information based on searches, there would be no money in it. Therefore advertising is required, but how they do that can appear unethical, but the bottom line is that Google is their business and they can program the search algorithms as they see fit. 

 

Whenever I do a search, it is frequently for academic publications, and I only use Google for a small part of the search, the rest are dedicated peer reviewed journal sites which host the papers such as PubMed, ScienceDirect etc or dedicated software such as readcube. 

 

But the reality is that your average Janet and John who want to know about meds they are taking, issues, side effects etc, will only use the default search engine, so what you are saying has a lot of weight.

 

For those interested, I found the following;

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC3799567/

 

https://www.research...health_sciences

 

https://ieeexplore.i...ocument/5673932


#3 fishinghat

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Posted 17 October 2020 - 12:44 PM

Good info. Thanks IUN


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