Accuracy of information on apparently credible websites: survey of five common health topics

Abstract

We determined the relation between credibility features and accuracy of contents of 121 websites that provided information on five common health topics: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (23 sites), ankle sprain (36), emergency contraception (32), menorrhagia (9), and female sterilisation (21). These sites were identified either by searching each of the most commonly used engines (such as Altavista, Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos, Northern Light, Webcrawler) or by simultaneously consulting them using a meta-search engine, Copernic 4.1 (www.copernic.com/). We selected English language websites whose content provided information about the topics. Website selection and data extractions were performed in duplicate, and agreement between the two assessors was high.