Department of Informatics, University of Economics in Katowice, 40-287 Katowice, Poland.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Feb 12;17(4):1160. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17041160.
The Google search engine answers many health and medical information queries every day. People have become used to searching for this type of information. This paper presents a study which examined the visibility of health and medical information websites. The purpose of this study was to find out why Google is decreasing the visibility of such websites and how to measure this decrease. Since August 2018, Google has been more rigorously rating these websites, since they can potentially impact people's health. The method of the study was to collect data about the visibility of health and medical information websites in sequential time snapshots. Visibility consists of combined data of unique keywords, positions, and URL results. The sample under study was made up of 21 websites selected from 10 European countries. The findings reveal that in sequential time snapshots, search visibility decreased. The decrease was not dependent on the country or the language. The main reason why Google is decreasing the visibility of such websites is that they do not meet high ranking criteria.
谷歌搜索引擎每天都会回答许多健康和医疗信息查询。人们已经习惯了搜索这类信息。本文介绍了一项研究，该研究检查了健康和医疗信息网站的可见性。本研究的目的是找出为什么谷歌降低了此类网站的可见性，以及如何衡量这种降低。自 2018 年 8 月以来，谷歌一直在更严格地评估这些网站，因为它们可能会对人们的健康产生影响。该研究的方法是收集关于健康和医疗信息网站在连续时间快照中的可见性的数据。可见性由独特关键字、位置和 URL 结果的组合数据组成。研究样本由从 10 个欧洲国家中选择的 21 个网站组成。研究结果表明，在连续的时间快照中，搜索可见性下降。这种下降与国家或语言无关。谷歌降低此类网站可见性的主要原因是它们不符合高排名标准。
