S3294 Are Facebook, Google, and Yelp Good Enough in Deciding Gastroenterologist?

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Social Media has become an important platform for public to decide medial services. Reliability of social media on deciding the medical service remains a huge challenge and underdetermined. Dependence of social media for the health information consumption and sharing has produced a proliferation of health-related user-generated content. METHODS: Online search results for the keywords “Gastroenterology doctors in city name” for five major cities (New York, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle and Los Angeles) on the 3 most commonly used web sites (Facebook, Google and Yelp). The top 5 results for each website were studied in detail with respect to the type of allergist practice – University-based or private. We also made a comparative analysis of the order in which the results were displayed in each of these three websites. RESULTS: The search results for 90 websites (Facebook, Yelp, Google) were dominated by private practice all. No academic Gastroenterology practice made the top 5 search results. There was no correlation between the ranking and placement of search results across different websites. The Gastroenterology practices listed at number one on Google in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Seattle were not listed among the top 5 results on Facebook. There was no significant correlation between the ranking on Facebook and Yelp. CONCLUSION: Private and Small practices by non- academic gastroenterologist dominate the search results for “Gastroenterologist” in the top 5 metro areas in United States. Academic institute or Academic affiliated institutes do not invest interest in developing their social media as Private practices. No significant correlation has been found between the top search results on the major social media platforms, therefore patients should check all search engines and academic accomplishments before selecting their gastroenterologist. American College of Gastroenterology should further promote their search engines with more enhanced placements of their websites.Table 1