We used four different sample searches to test each of the sites. The strategy was to address both professional information needs and consumer health information. We identify in each category a topic which we would expect to be well covered in any resource as well as another topic which is either of more recent interest or more technical in scope, and thus less likely to be included across the board. We also wanted to use searches that used single terms, phrases, simple concepts, and multi-part concepts. Topics were selected from a pool of suggested topics from clinicians and medical reference librarians.
Truncation allows the searcher to enter part of a word or term, and still get valid results.
Because not all the sites actually had search engines, we could not actually review all the sites we reviewed for design and interface issues. If a previously reviewed site did not have a search engine, but did have a browsable structure that allowed us to find information on the designated search topics, we went ahead and included the results from those sites. For some sites, such as Martindale's, we could not easily determine how to locate information on our topics, so Martindale's and similar sites were removed from this set of results. We also did not include a site if there was a charge for searching for information, which excluded such sites as MDConsult and Internet Medicine. A few of the sites reviewed in the earlier section actually qualified as general search engines, so for this purpose of comparing search results, they were not included among the health sciences sites.