Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Why using Google is a bad idea

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Searching the web is one of the most useful and dominant ways in which we find information. Navigating the vast stretches of the content sea is made possible through a few providers who've created proprietary algorithms which let you find the most relevant websites for your search. Of the major search providers Google is by far the largest, with a large impact upon society. "Googling" has become a de facto synoynm for performing a web search, and Google has pervaded internet culture, going so far as to prompt pages such as LMGTFY (Let me Google that for you), which are used in a joking manner to tell people to stop asking questions and instead Google-search for answers.

Overall search-engines (including Google) have provided massive social benefits, and much of Wikipedia would likely be lesser where it not for them. However, it is important to know that significant problems exist when using commercial and consumer search engines. By identifying when and where these problems arise it is possible to avoid them. These problems are best identified in what is widely regarded as the seminal paper of the industry — eloquently captured by none other than the founders of Google, Brin and Page who state: ""Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.""

Google and similar search-engines sort pages by relevance...But what constitutes relevance? A number of different strategies have existed over the years, some better, some worse. The core reason why Google and Google scholar should be avoided are not that they employ relevance ranking algorithms, so does PubMed. It is that their ranking algorithms are opaque and not available to the public — the exact oposite of PubMeds (detailed summary here ).

WebofScience? Scopus? Do they have similar issues?

We at Wikipedia are not saying you should not use Google, or that information you find on Google is false. We also realize that commercial search engines provide solutions today to which there are no meaningful alternatives. Rather than tell you to avoid these — we want you to employ a health dose of skepticism, and to be aware when it may be improper to use Google, Google Scholar or similar consumer search engines: for example when writing about medical conditions on Wikipedia.

Why Google sucks when it comes to health information
This image is fair use but can not be hosted on Wikipedia. (link to Imgur)

Writing & Research
In this essay I will treat writing articles for Wikipedia and engaging in scientific research as the same thing. As anyone who's experienced both knows, they're not immediately comparable, and the differences in approach is large. However, some of the central tenets are the same — chiefly the goal of present findings or information without introducing bias. Bias can occur at many levels, from what. It is impossible to entirely avoid bias, but that doesn't mean we should try to minimize it in every action we take. Using Google, Google scholar or any other proprietary websearch — where the algorithms can't be independently verified risks introducing a massive degree of bias.