Dr. Google, what can you tell me about homeopathy? Comparative study of the top10 websites in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Mexico and Spain
Keywords:
Search engines, Information search, Algorithms, SERP, Rankings, Biases, Google, Web sites, Health, Health information, Homeopathy.Abstract
Users access to Google to find out about health issues is frequent among citizens. This research analyzes the best results of three generic searches on homeopathy, collected in four waves in five countries: Spain, France, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Specifically, the fluctuation of the corpus ranking is studied, and a sample of the ten best-positioned pages in each country is taken to analyze their content (the authorship of the website, the stance of the effectiveness of homeopathy, the presence of controversy and the type of content). The results show that the ranking is stable; that the stance of homeopathy is linked to the state of public opinion in the country; and that the majority of websites that appear better-positioned are from media.
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