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To the Editor: Wolfe et al¹ recently reported that 53% of US adults use the Internet to seek health-related information. Measurement of Internet use, however, has generally been obtained by self-report, rather than by assessment of actual search behaviors.^1-2 Because search engines represent the principal method by which people seek Internet-based information,³ we analyzed the frequency of use of search engine keywords for health-related subject matter.

Methods

During the period from September 9, 2001, through July 20, 2002, we evaluated the 300 most common queries in the Wordtracker Top 500 Keyword Report, which is published via e-mail each Saturday.⁴ We examined a total of 39 weekly reports, each including a list of the top 300 queries and the total number of queries during the surveyed 24-hour period. The mean (SD) 24-hour query rate was 5 100 000 (900 000) and accounted for all queries from 2 large Internet metacrawlers, Metacrawler and Dogpile. While the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

George Phillipov, PhD; Patrick J. Phillips, FRACP
Department of Endocrinology
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Health Service
Woodville, Australia

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Health-Related Searches on the Internet
Eysenbach and Kohler
JAMA 2004;291:2946-2946.
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