ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2020
COVID-19-Related Internet Search Patterns Among People in the United States: Exploratory Analysis.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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
7 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Simplifying Public Health Recommendations: Use of a Public CDC Chatbot During the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2022-2024.Public health reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974) · 2026Article
- Viral Disease Goes Viral: Characterizing How Cancer Patients Use Internet Resources for COVID-19 Information.Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education · 2023Article
- Association of Digital Health Literacy with Future Anxiety as Mediated by Information Satisfaction and Fear of COVID-19: A Pathway Analysis among Taiwanese Students.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Designing a conceptual framework for misinformation on social media: a qualitative study on COVID-19.BMC research notes · 2021Article
- Human information behavior during the Covid-19 health crisis. A literature review.Library & information science research · 2021Review
- Development of the 12-Item Social Media Disinformation Scale and its Association With Social Media Addiction and Mental Health Related to COVID-19 in Tunisia: Survey-Based Pilot Case Study.JMIR formative research · 2021Article
- Digital technologies as sources of information for patients and caregivers during COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional survey.Digital healthArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe internet is a well-known source of information that patients use to better inform their opinions and to guide their conversations with physicians during clinic visits. The novelty of the recent COVID-19 outbreak has led patients to turn more frequently to the internet to gather more information and to alleviate their concerns about the virus.
objectiveThe aims of the study were to (1) determine the most commonly searched phrases related to COVID-19 in the United States and (2) identify the sources of information for these web searches.
methodsSearch terms related to COVID-19 were entered into Google. Questions and websites from Google web search were extracted to a database using customized software. Each question was categorized into one of 6 topics: clinical signs and symptoms, treatment, transmission, cleaning methods, activity modification, and policy. Additionally, the websites were categorized according to source: World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), non-CDC government, academic, news, and other media.
resultsIn total, 200 questions and websites were extracted. The most common question topic was transmission (n=63, 31.5%), followed by clinical signs and symptoms (n=54, 27.0%) and activity modification (n=31, 15.5%). Notably, the clinical signs and symptoms category captured questions about myths associated with the disease, such as whether consuming alcohol stops the coronavirus. The most common websites provided were maintained by the CDC, the WHO, and academic medical organizations. Collectively, these three sources accounted for 84.0% (n=168) of the websites in our sample.
conclusionsIn the United States, the most commonly searched topics related to COVID-19 were transmission, clinical signs and symptoms, and activity modification. Reassuringly, a sizable majority of internet sources provided were from major health organizations or from academic medical institutions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.