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What would a “good” WebMD look like?

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Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#91

Post by biztos »

ravenstine wrote: post #31
jjar wrote: post #15

A better question might be: Why is the private sector responsible for providing accurate health information? As this article shows, the incentives for people running medical websites and the people reading them are not aligned. I'd say the UK NHS website and symptoms/medications pages hit the nail on the head - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ . It has no advertising and provides short, easily readable and actionable i…

That's a nice page, and I'll definitely bookmark that one. But I don't see most of the public using something like that over WebMD. WebMD is complete trash (I even block it in my Kagi search preferences), but it succeeds over sites like the NHS one because of blog SEO. WebMD is really a glorified blog with posts about every condition you might get paranoid over. I don't know how precisely they achieve this, but they'…

> The Google continues to put them near the top of results after all these years.

WebMD: the Pinterest of Health.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#92

Post by ajmurmann »

tmoravec wrote: post #39
ravenstine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice page, and I'll definitely bookmark that one. But I don't see most of the public using something like that over WebMD. WebMD is complete trash (I even block it in my Kagi search preferences), but it succeeds over sites like the NHS one because of blog SEO. WebMD is really a glorified blog with posts about every condition you might get paranoid over. I don't know how precisely they achieve this, but they'…

So there's a private option that's terrible (WebMD) and a private option that's terrific (Merck Manuals). And it's the terrible one that ranks well at Google. Sounds like a Google problem and apparently only a Google problem.

That's where I continue to want to see what results in a search engine would look like that heavily punishes presence of advertisements in a result. All the SEO spam pages are ad-driven, so cutting out anything following that incentive should result in removal of all pages that follow that terrible SEO spam pattern that ruins search results.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#93

Post by MisterTea »

ravenstine wrote: post #31
jjar wrote: post #15

A better question might be: Why is the private sector responsible for providing accurate health information? As this article shows, the incentives for people running medical websites and the people reading them are not aligned. I'd say the UK NHS website and symptoms/medications pages hit the nail on the head - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ . It has no advertising and provides short, easily readable and actionable i…

That's a nice page, and I'll definitely bookmark that one. But I don't see most of the public using something like that over WebMD. WebMD is complete trash (I even block it in my Kagi search preferences), but it succeeds over sites like the NHS one because of blog SEO. WebMD is really a glorified blog with posts about every condition you might get paranoid over. I don't know how precisely they achieve this, but they'…

> I don't know how precisely they achieve this, but they're doing something right in an SEO sense if The Google continues to put them near the top of results after all these years.

One hand washes the other. WebMD is chock full of google and other ads.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#94

Post by biztos »

petepete wrote: post #86
hhmc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make the claim (without any real data), that the NHS has _such_ institutional power in the UK that it goes a long way to transcend any SEO shortfall it may have.

It does. Google treats gov.uk and nhs.uk sites as authoritative sources and ranks accordingly. We typically pay no consideration to SEO on non-campaign sites. It doesn't stop ads from sneaking in above the results though. There's a whole industry of shady companies 'hijacking' and charging extra for free/cheap government services.

What does "non-campaign" mean in this context?

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#95

Post by dartharva »

unethical_ban wrote: post #29
stevage wrote: post #17

The phenomenon they describe for health information is, IMHO, absolutely rife across many different domains. Try looking up information about gardening, plant management, home improvement, etc - you'll find the same thing. Search results dominated by sites that have mastered the art of producing SEO-optimised "content" that is not authoritative, full of waffle, and not especially helpful. For whatever reason, the bus…

Tragedy of the Commons. We all could use easily accessible, accurate and unbiased medical information, but most people can't or won't pay a website to procure and publish such content, especially when they don't really know if they can trust the site! It's rather circular. If only there were some association of all people, some kind of organization that included all members of the public, which could collect a nomina…

The existence and success of Wikipedia (and other similar sites) easily counters this notion of needing consumer propensity to pay for a knowledge repository. Sure, reliability and accuracy of the information may be put into question, but that would have been a concern either way even if it were a paid service.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#96

Post by jleyank »

tmoravec wrote: post #39
ravenstine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice page, and I'll definitely bookmark that one. But I don't see most of the public using something like that over WebMD. WebMD is complete trash (I even block it in my Kagi search preferences), but it succeeds over sites like the NHS one because of blog SEO. WebMD is really a glorified blog with posts about every condition you might get paranoid over. I don't know how precisely they achieve this, but they'…

So there's a private option that's terrible (WebMD) and a private option that's terrific (Merck Manuals). And it's the terrible one that ranks well at Google. Sounds like a Google problem and apparently only a Google problem.

No, as I suspect the ad revenues are just fine the way they are now. Google isn’t altruistic. They want ad rates.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#97

Post by biztos »

stevage wrote: post #17

The phenomenon they describe for health information is, IMHO, absolutely rife across many different domains. Try looking up information about gardening, plant management, home improvement, etc - you'll find the same thing. Search results dominated by sites that have mastered the art of producing SEO-optimised "content" that is not authoritative, full of waffle, and not especially helpful. For whatever reason, the bus…

I have noticed this on YouTube as well, I would assume something similar is happening on other video sites.

Sometimes there is a video on a trending topic among the first few Google search results, and when you go over to YouTube and have a look it turns out to be a montage of stock and/or stolen photos, with a synthesized voice reading a narration that was obviously churned out by a content mill somewhere very low-wage, if not generated by "AI."

It baffles me that Google ranks these things highly, it's not like they don't have an eye on YouTube activity.

In the end I have no better explanation than institutional rot: so much money is flowing in, and engineering incentives are so perverse, any problem that doesn't directly irritate the cash cow is not gonna get fixed.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#98

Post by edmundsauto »

_fat_santa wrote: post #61
jjar wrote: post #15

A better question might be: Why is the private sector responsible for providing accurate health information? As this article shows, the incentives for people running medical websites and the people reading them are not aligned. I'd say the UK NHS website and symptoms/medications pages hit the nail on the head - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ . It has no advertising and provides short, easily readable and actionable i…

I think the issue isn't data, its the "packaging". Going through the NHS website, it's useful if you already know what you have. I'll use myself as an example because I had an ingrown hair on my neck a few weeks back, went on google and I didn't search for "Ingrown Hair" because at that stage, I didn't know that it was an ingrown hair. I searched for "bumps on your neck" which led me to conclude that it was an ingrow…

This is the model for weather in the US. Do you like weather.com and all the derivatives?

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#99

Post by alistairSH »

jjar wrote: post #15

A better question might be: Why is the private sector responsible for providing accurate health information? As this article shows, the incentives for people running medical websites and the people reading them are not aligned. I'd say the UK NHS website and symptoms/medications pages hit the nail on the head - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ . It has no advertising and provides short, easily readable and actionable i…

The closest I've found to the NHS sites are published by Mayo Clinic in the US... https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions

Still not perfect, but I've found it more useful than WebMD.

Re: What would a “good” WebMD look like?

#100

Post by switch007 »

Angostura wrote: post #84
switch007 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue with the NHS is that I get the impression the information they publish that strongly respects their goals and desires perhaps to the detriment of patients sometimes. I’ve certainly noticed in the past big differences in advice. The NHS will downplay and not suggest investigations whereas another (non UK) site does the opposite. The NHS advice surely is carefully crafted not to cause unnecessary (from their…

I wouldn't necessarily assume that not suggesting investigations is detrimental to patient health. There is a continuing big debate in the UK medical profession about how over-investigation and over-medication/medicalising people can be a real problem in terms of patient health. If you are seeing a disparity between UK and US in terms of advice about when something needs to be investigated, it could be that the US si…

I was careful to say non-UK. (I’m also not American fwiw)

I agree with many of your points.

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