A comparative study of Internet search engines by applying "cost effective treatment for myocardial infarction" as a search topic

The Internet has become one of the necessities in the medical sciences and has created a global information village. It is essential to know various features of the Internet and to utilize it efficiently in each field of science. A comparative study of Internet search engines was conducted for a specific search topic, "cost effective treatment for myocardial infarction." The data sources were published conference reports, journal articles, personal communications, and Internet resources. Data on features of the Internet search engines were obtained by browsing each of the 20 search engines selected and by communicating with individuals in charge of each search engine when needed. Actual searches on the topic were conducted by using the 20 search engines. Search term variety for cost effectiveness ranges from pharmacoeconomics to medical economics, providing a total number of more than 10. Search term variety for myocardial infarction ranged from heart failure to coronary heart disease, and at least five major terms exist. Basic search features differ from one search engine to another and a user should be familiar with those differences. The number of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and contents of each search engine are also different. The number of records retrieved ranged from 0-22,000 among different search engines. Lycos and Magellan gave a fairly good hit percentage or relevance factor The system design of the Internet search engines is based on open search architecture (key word indexes) or it allows the creator of the program to index his/her own page (subject directories). These different approaches resulted in the existence of varying degrees of function of the Internet search engines. Aims and scopes of this paper include not only to retrieve scientific papers and articles but also to locate information on scientific meetings, scientific presentations, and other scientific resources. Some commercial search engines enable users to access those information sites.