Only one-fourth of Americans who search the Internet for health advice regularly check the source and date of the information they find to assess its quality, according to a survey released on Sunday by the Pew Internet Project.

About 10 million American adults — or 7% of U.S. Internet users — searched for information on a health topic or medical problem on a typical day in August, the non-profit think-tank said. That ranks health searches at about the same level of popularity as paying bills online, reading blogs or using the Internet to find a phone number or address.

Common health topics searched on the Web include specific diseases or medical treatments, exercise, nutrition, prescription drugs and alternative medicines, Pew said.

Just 15% of those surveyed said they always checked the source and date of the health information found online, while another 10% said they did so most of the time. Three-quarters of those surveyed said they checked the source and date sometimes, hardly ever or never, Pew said.

Pew researcher Susannah Fox said one possible reason why Internet users do not tend to check sources or dates is because of the health websites themselves. Only 2% of popular health sites display that information on their pages, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that is scheduled for release soon, Fox said.

Most Web users look for health information with a general search engine such as Google or Yahoo, the study found.

“The question is whether consumers are doing the best that they can by going to general search engines,” Fox said.

Read more, or check out www.metamojo.com health search vertical.

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Posted By: froosh | Oct 30th