Using Google™ to Find Health Information
The following tips will help you use Google™ more effectively to find health information online.
1. Make keywords as specific as possible
For example:
rheumatoid arthritis abatacept
will produce more "on target" results than
arthritis drug therapy
2. Word order is important
Remember that the first term(s) you type in are ranked as most important, so word order makes a difference when searching. Also, Google™ looks for your terms as phrases first. Switch the word order to get different results.
3. Use Google™'s Advanced Search page
The link to "advanced search" next to the Google™ dialog box allows you to do more effective searches. You can search for a phrase and add a set of synonyms for concepts that you want to have in your results.
For example:
All of these words: knee pain chronic
Exact wording or phrase: rheumatoid arthritis
One or more of these words: complementary alternative herb aromatherapy
If you expand the link at the bottom of the advanced search page (for date, usage rights, and more) you will be given more ways to refine your search.
4. Use other Google™ tools
Google Scholar™ provides a simple way to broadly search for academic materials such as peer-reviewed articles, books, and society and university publications. Google Books™ can also lead you to these but the contents will usually be older.
5. Expand your search results
By default, Google™ will include all terms specified in the search box. If you are looking for one or more terms to match, the "OR" operator will look for both. Use all caps for "or."
For example:
complementary OR alternative OR herb OR aromatherapy
To search not only your search term but also for its synonyms, type the tilde (~) sign immediately in front of your search term.
For example:
~women
will retrieve woman, women, female
6. Use a hyphen to pick up variants
You can place a hyphen between two words in order to retrieve the words separated by a space, hyphenated, or as a single word.
For example:
Health-care
will retrieve health care, health-care, or healthcare.
7. Use medical terms
Using appropriate medical terms will leave out some of the commercial and layperson websites if you want more research or health professional level materials.
For example:
use the word neoplasm rather than cancer
use the word influenza rather than flu
8. Limit your search to trustworthy sites
Select the Advanced Search option and choose a domain name that can give trustworthy limited results, such as .gov, .edu, .org. You can also put a trustworthy url in the domain box. If you put ncbi.nlm.nih.gov in the domain box, for example, your word(s) or phrases will be pulled from PubMed, a database from the National Library of Medicine.
9. Search for an information source
If you want to limit your search to a certain medical source that produces quality information, you can type this in the search box (topic before source).
For example:
influenza cdc (for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
arthritis nih (for National Institutes of Health)
10. Need more information?
For more information on this topic, consult: "Joe Barker's Extreme Googling for Health and Medical Information Professionals".
11. Would you like to print this information?
Use the print feature in your browser to obtain a numbered list of hyperlinks that correspond to the hyperlinked text.
Page authored by Fran Allegri and Xiaomei Gu, Health Sciences Library at UNC-Chapel Hill.