Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Infodemiology
Date Submitted: Feb 14, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Feb 14, 2022 - Apr 11, 2022
Date Accepted: Aug 20, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
The role of Information Boxes in Search Engine Results for Symptom Searches: Analysis of Archival Data
ABSTRACT
Background:
Few prior studies have sought to understand how individuals who are seeking information about health symptoms navigate different types of page elements on search engine results pages including health information boxes.
Objective:
Using real world search engine data, this study sought to investigate how users searching for common health-related symptoms with Bing interacted with information boxes and other page elements.
Methods:
A sample of searches was compiled for the 17 most common medical symptoms queried on Microsoft Bing by users in the United States between September and November 2019 (N= 28,552 searches). The association between page elements that users saw, their characteristics, and time spent on elements or clicks was investigated using linear and logistic regression.
Results:
Users searching for common health-related symptoms saw pages with standard web results (84%), itemized web results (82%), ads (46%) and info boxes (64%). Users spent on average 22 seconds on the search engine results page with greatest proportion of time on info boxes and least time on itemized web results. Info box characteristics such as reading ease and appearance of related condition were associated with longer time on the info box. While none of the characteristics of info boxes were associated with clicks on standard web results, info box characteristics such as reading ease and related searches were negatively correlated with clicks on ads.
Conclusions:
Info boxes were attended to by users, and their characteristics may influence future web searching. Future studies are needed that further study the utility of info boxes and their influence on real world health seeking behaviors.
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