Comparing Health Search Engines
Finding information on science and health can be daunting. Results are overwhelming if you type in a keyword that is too general. But even if you know the specific keyword phrase that will get you the most targeted results, it can be hard to sift through and determine which link will yield the best information.
Search engines for specific niches are available. Two have been developed in the area of science and health – Medstory.com and Healia.com. (See my previous review of Medstory.com.) They both have their strengths and weaknesses which I have reviewed in this screencast demonstrating with a search for the serotonin receptor 2c gene.*
*I’m not sure why the uploaded Google Video screencast is such poor quality and why the last millisecond got truncated when the original file is fine. When uploaded to services like Google Video and YouTube, screencasts suffer from reduced video resolution and the change in aspect ratio. More at Screencast Central. If you’d like to download the ~3 Mb wmv file for viewing on your personal computer, right click and save to file here.
Tags: science, health, search engines, medstory, healia, diseases, illness, medicine, genes, genetics, dna
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] My first stop when looking for information on diseases and health is Google.com but sometimes the search results are totally overwhelming and a complete jumble of junk and good resources. I’ve created a screencast comparing two health search engines, Healia.com and Medstory.com, with Google. If you’re in the habit of doing your own research (which you should be!), you might like to know that there are other search engines available that are targeted to information on health. Hope you find the screencast helpful! [...]
[...] on DNA now features a Healia search widget in the sidebar. I previously reviewed the health search engine and created a screencast comparing Healia to Medstory and Google. (In exchange for featuring the [...]