Problems using Google search to Find Reliable Information

[aristotle]

Lately I've been doing some internet research on the use of various nutritional supplements as "natural remedies". Google's first-page search results usually show supposed "authoritative" sites like Webmd and the Mayo Clinic inter-mixed with little-known small sites. Here is the problem:

-- The authoritative sites usually don't have much information about natural treatments and tend to shift the discussion to prescription drugs.

-- Many of the small sites make a lot of claims, describe miraculous recoveries, and sometimes recommend a particular product sold at a particular website.

-- Some of the small sites warn against using a particular supplement, even calling it dangerous, and recommend something else instead.

So in a nutshell it's a maze of confusion. Yet I get the impression that google has to handle an awful lot of searches for this type of information.

But I don't know the solution.

[goodroi]

Use scholar.google.com to find relevant research and then rewrite that mind numbing scientific content into something a human can understand. Good content is not easy or cheap but is usually much more profitable than the easy & cheap content that is regurgitated on 100 other sites.

[aristotle]

Thanks goodroi -- Actually I've been researching to determine what to buy, not for writing new content.

But your post reminds me that I forgot to mention that scientific articles sometimes appear in the results. But they're often hard for a layman like me to read and understand

[aristotle]

P.S. There are lots and lots of other people besides me searching google for information about natural treatments. That's the main reason why I decided to start this topic. I think it's one of the most difficult problems that google has to deal with.

[martinibuster]

Well, I have said this before, and I will repeat it for your benefit. Google Search's focus is strongly biased in favor of retrieving web pages that satisfy users. That's the strong metric in use. That doesn't mean Google doesn't try to weed out less authoritative sites, but as you can see for yourself, Google has a long way to go.

What you see in the SERPs is what makes most of the people happy. <-- This is what I have been saying for the past couple years and it is still true today. I call it the Fruit Loops algo. This is based on the supermarket cereal aisle analogy. Supermarkets stock what shoppers want. Thus, Fruit Loops is on the shelf. This is how Google Search tends to work, because of their bias towards satisfying users.

Make sense?
;)