Vertical Search Engines in a Healthy Space - How about Healia?
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I was actually pretty eager to check out Healia, because I'd heard a lot about its approach. It's the only site that lets searchers use multiple filters. When you first approach it, though, the site is not a portal; its interface is as clean as Google's. Again, I searched on breast cancer. A rectangle at the top of the results linked to similar and more specific searches: "mammary neoplasms," "bilateral breast cancer," "breast carcinoma," and "ductal breast carcinoma." Yes, I saw these words on other sites, but not as recommended alternative searches.
To the left are Healia's filters, which are a series of check boxes. I checked results for/about professionals and females, and results that have/are advanced reading, privacy policy, and have interactive tools. The results list changed dynamically with every click. With that many filters, though, I only got one result, plus a warning from Healia that using too many filters could yield some unexpected results. Very well; I backed off of my last two choices and still saw a healthy set of hyperlinks. It was nice to see such specific filtering options.
In addition to those filters, there were tabs at the top of the results that I could click, relating to prevention, causes/risks, symptoms, diagnosis/tests, and treatment. Strangely, clicking on these tabs did not change the order of my results as much as I expected it would. I was pleased to see that I could clear all the filters with one click of my mouse. I also noticed that, below the links returned for each result, you could see the list of "attributes" Healia had assigned each item (which corresponded to the filters).
Okay, so much for breast cancer; how did Healia do for BRCA testing? Well, it asked me if I meant "drug testing." But it also returned more than 2,000 results for my query. Clicking "professionals" took it down to 86 results, while unchecking that box and clicking on "basic reading" gave me 147 results. I couldn't filter for the particular heritage I wanted to, but just as with any search engine I could add the appropriate word. Healia kept my "basic reading" filter (I hadn't unchecked it) and gave me 36 results that looked fairly relevant.
Finally, I expected Healia to do very well with ACL. I cleared my filters first this time. It gave me more than 6,000 results, and an "expanded term" which spelled out the abbreviation (and yielded less than half the original results when clicked on; I guess doctors like talking in abbreviations as much as geeks do). I filtered for teens because I thought I might get something about ACL injuries in high school sports. I only got two results. Of these, I ended up having to search the first site for ACL because there was nothing about it on the first page (it did offer 70 results though). The second link probably would have been highly relevant, as it came from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons - but clicking on it returned an error page (and a search on the site for ACL teens didn't return any results).
So do these specialized search engines offer better or more relevant information than the more general ones? Well, I have to admit to a greater confidence when searching with them that the information I turned up would be both relevant and medically accurate, especially with Healthline and Healia, despite the way Healia let me down on the last search. For something on which there is as much information available as breast cancer, the general search engines may be good enough for a starting point. If you're looking for more specialized information, though, you may want to use one of these engines.
Both the major search engines and the specialized search engines proved at least somewhat vulnerable to linking to pages that no longer exist - and while the specialized search engines offer fewer, more relevant results, that also makes them vulnerable when some of those links don't work (if a few of Yahoo's links don't work, at least you have plenty more form which to choose). Still, it is this increased level of relevance on relatively obscure topics that will give at least certain vertical search engines a fighting chance to compete with the Goliath that is Google.
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