Most of us, and I have to admit I'm one of them, probably automatically think of Google as our default search engine.
In fact, searching the following query (BTW, using Microsoft Bing, interestingly)
percent of internet searches using google yields the reply that Google accounts for 86.19% percent of web searches overall.
So I assume that the majority, and perhaps a considerable one at that, of the web searches we all do to retrieve prostate information are performed using Google.
But then I started to wonder. Google, Bing, and some of the other "name" search engines are more or less generalized search engines, while there do exist others which specialize in medicine.
So should we assume that the ones specializing in medicine might just offer more and better answers to queries involving prostate information?
But before answering that question, a look at two relevant articles. First,
"16 Best Search Engines Other Than Google 2023":
https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-search-engines-other-than-google/#:~:text=best%20search%20engines%20other%20than%20google%201%201.,ecosia%20...%208%208.%20swisscows%20...%20more%20itemswhich is a review article, probably as good as any I guess, of what it says are the "16 best," along with comments on each.
SUMMARY OF IT:
The top five search engines, in order: Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Startpage. Bing may return more accurate results than Google and has a good visual search feature. Yahoo is good at personalizing results and offers Yahoo Answers for quick service. DuckDuckGo doesn't track searches, and has good filter bubble. Startpage has good security and privacy features.
And next,
"5 Best Medical Search Engines":
https://writingstudio.com/blog/medical-search-engines/also a review article with comments.
SUMMARY OF IT:
The top five are: PubMed, ScienceDirect,
openMD, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar. PubMed is most popular and is easy to use. ScienceDirect indexes medical journals owned by Elsevier.
openMD offers a good medical dictionary with links to additional sources. Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that assist providers in making evidenced-based decisions. Google Scholar enables searching a variety of databases across multiple disciplines.
But then I came across this:
"Searching the Internet for information on prostate cancer screening: an assessment of quality"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15245946/And while it is specifically about
screening, it provides some very informative, and more general, conclusions about
prostate matters other than screening.
From a summary of it:
"Objectives: To identify how on-line information relating to prostate cancer screening (PCS) is best sourced, whether through general, medical, or meta-search engines, and to assess the quality of that information.
Methods: Websites providing information about PCS were searched across 15 search engines representing three distinct types: general, medical, and meta-search engines.
Results: General and meta-search engines were significantly more efficient at retrieving relevant information on PCS compared with medical search engines.
Conclusions: The current lack of a clear consensus on guidelines and recommendation in published data is also reflected by the variable quality of information found on-line. Specialized medical search engines were no more likely to retrieve relevant, high-quality information than general or meta-search engines". (Boldfaces mine).
Really? I found that surprising when first reading it, frankly expecting the opposite to be true.
But then I do a little more searching and I find this,
"Google Versus PubMed: Comparison of Google and PubMed's Search Tools for Answering Clinical Questions in the Emergency Department"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31623934/which tells us
"Study objective: We assess which search tool returns the highest-quality, most relevant citations for standardized clinical questions arising at the point of care in the emergency department (ED).
Methods: Search terms related to 3 clinical questions commonly encountered in the ED were entered into 5 search tools. The following search engines and tools were assessed: Google Web, Google Scholar, PubMed, PubMed Clinical Queries set to narrow search, and PubMed Clinical Queries set to broad search.
Conclusion: For the common clinical questions assessed in this study, PubMed Clinical Queries narrow search had the highest-quality, most relevant, and most readable hits. Google Scholar performed well, in some cases retrieving citations that other search engines did not. PubMed and Google Web were not as efficient." But perhaps this seeming inconsistency has more to do with the nature of the enqueries, general questions vs. ER questions, than with overall ability to provide answers.
That is, "clinical questions in the emergency department" are best answered by the medically specialized engines, while the more general ones are better handled by the "regular" engines.
If so, then it would appear that for the more general types of questions that we here might ask, the general search engines, Google being the leader, might just be adequate enough for our purposes.
So when we say we will "google the answer" rather than "search for it," maybe most of the time that just might be enough.