Open AccessGoogling Musculoskeletal-Related Pain and Ranking of Medical Associations’ Patient Information Pages: Google Ads Keyword Planner Analysis
Author(s) -
Yoichiro Yamaguchi,
Dong Hoon Lee,
Takuya Nagai,
Taro Funamoto,
Takuya Tajima,
Etsuo Chosa
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
jmir. journal of medical internet research/journal of medical internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.446
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1439-4456
pISSN - 1438-8871
DOI - 10.2196/18684
Subject(s) - ranking (information retrieval) , planner , the internet , information retrieval , medicine , internet users , world wide web , medical information , computer science , search engine , health information , keyword search , family medicine , internet privacy , health care , political science , artificial intelligence , law
Background Most people currently use the internet to obtain information about many subjects, including health information. Thus, medical associations need to provide accurate medical information websites. Although medical associations have their own patient education pages, it is not clear if these websites actually show up in search results. Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate how well medical associations function as online information providers by searching for information about musculoskeletal-related pain online and determining the ranking of the websites of medical associations. Methods We conducted a Google search for frequently searched keywords. Keywords were extracted using Google Ads Keyword Planner associated with “pain” relevant to the musculoskeletal system from June 2016 to December 2019. The top 20 search queries were extracted and searched using the Google search engine in Japan and the United States. Results The number of suggested queries for “pain” provided by Google Ads Keyword Planner was 930 in the United States and 2400 in Japan. Among the top 20 musculoskeletal-related pain queries chosen, the probability that the medical associations’ websites would appear in the top 10 results was 30% in the United States and 45% in Japan. In five queries each, the associations’ websites did not appear among the top 100 results. No significant difference was found in the rank of the associations’ website search results ( P =.28). Conclusions To provide accurate medical information to patients, it is essential to undertake effective measures for search engine optimization. For orthopedic associations, it is necessary that their websites should appear among the top search results.