How do people judge the quality of health information online?
The best they can, but probably not the way you think they should. However, we may have bigger fish to fry in health care. Follow me on this one: Most people’s first stop for health information is a general search site. Google dominates the search market. A British Medical Journal article found that Google is a pretty good diagnostician. Very few people report bad outcomes from their online health research. UPDATE: I stand corrected on my citation of “Googling for a diagnosis” thanks to the comments on e-patients.net and those attached to the original BMJ article. Thank you!
