ArticleFrontiers in public health2015
Adding Dimensions to the Analysis of the Quality of Health Information of Websites Returned by Google: Cluster Analysis Identifies Patterns of Websites According to their Classification and the Type of Intervention Described.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Clinical relevance of the cagA and vacA s1m1 status and antibiotic resistance in Helicobacter pylori: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC infectious diseases · 2022Pooled it
- Scrolling for science: Assessing the quality and accuracy of Crohn's disease-related content on Instagram reels.PloS one · 2026Article
- In Web We Trust: The Promised Cannabidiol Effects on Obesity as a Matter of Language and Marketing on Webpages.Current neuropharmacology · 2025Article
- Evaluating the reliability and readability of online information on osteoporosis.Archives of endocrinology and metabolism · 2021Article
- Quality and readability of online information on ankylosing spondylitis.Clinical rheumatology · 2019Article
- Fake News or Weak Science? Visibility and Characterization of Antivaccine Webpages Returned by Google in Different Languages and Countries.Frontiers in immunology · 2018Article
- What Is Health Information Quality? Ethical Dimension and Perception by Users.Frontiers in medicine · 2018Article
- Online Information on Antioxidants: Information Quality Indicators, Commercial Interests, and Ranking by Google.Frontiers in public health · 2017Article
- Bad News: Analysis of the Quality of Information on Influenza Prevention Returned by Google in English and Italian.Frontiers in immunology · 2015Article
- Evaluating online health information quality using machine learning and deep learning: A systematic literature review.Digital healthReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsMost of the instruments used to assess the quality of health information on the Web (e.g., the JAMA criteria) only analyze one dimension of information quality (IQ), trustworthiness. In this study, we analyzed the type of intervention that websites describe, whether supported by evidence-based medicine (EBM) or not, to provide a further dimension of IQ, accuracy, and correlated this with the established criteria.
methodsWe searched Google for "migraine cure" and analyzed the first 200 websites for: (1) JAMA criteria (authorship, attribution, disclosure, currency); (2) class of websites (commercial, health portals, professional, patient groups, no-profit); and (3) type of intervention described (approved drugs, alternative medicine, food, procedures, lifestyle, drugs still at the research stage). We used hierarchical cluster analysis to identify different patterns of websites according to their classification and the information provided. Subgroup analysis on the first 10 websites returned was performed.
resultsGoogle returned health portals (44%), followed by commercial websites (31%) and journalism websites (11%). The type of intervention mentioned most often was alternative medicine (55%), followed by procedures (49%), lifestyle (42%), food (41%), and approved drugs (35%). Cluster analysis indicated that health portals are more likely to describe more than one type of treatment while commercial websites most often describe only one. The average JAMA score of commercial websites was significantly lower than for health portals or journalism websites, and this was mainly due to lack of information on the authors of the text and indication of the date the information was written. Looking at the first 10 websites from Google, commercial websites are underrepresented and approved drugs overrepresented.
conclusionAnalyzing the type of therapies/prevention methods provides additional information to the trustworthiness measures, such as the JAMA score, and could be a convenient and objective indicator of websites whose information is based on EBM.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.