Posts Tagged ‘Health’

Search Engine Optimization-Searching by Means of Subject Directories

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Think back to the library card catalogue analogy.  In the old card files, and even in today’s computer terminal library catalogues, you find information by searching on either the author, the title, or the subject.  You usually choose the subject option when you want to cover a broad range of information.

Example:  You’d like to create your own home page on the Web, but you don’t know how to write HTML, you’ve never created a graphic file, and you’re not sure how you’d post a page on the Web even if you knew how to write one.   In short, you need a lot of information on a rather broad topic–Web publishing.

Your best bet is not a search engine, but a Web directory like the Open Directory Project,  Google Directory or  Yahoo.  A directory is a subject-tree style catalogue that organizes the Web into major topics, including Arts, Business and Economy, Computers and Internet, Education, Entertainment, Government, Health, News, Recreation, Reference, Regional, Science, Social Science, Society and Culture.  Under each of these topics is a list of subtopics, and under each of those is another list, and another, and so on, moving from the more general to the more specific.

Example: To find out about Web page publishing from Yahoo, select the Computers and Internet Topic, under which you find a subtopic on the Wide World Web. Click on that and you find another list of subtopics, several of which are pertinent to your search: Web Page Authoring, CGI Scripting, Java, HTML, Page Design, Tutorials.  Selecting any of these subtopics eventually takes you to Web pages that have been posted precisely for the purpose of giving you the information you need.

If you are clear about the topic of your query, start with a Web directory rather than a search engine.  Directories probably won’t give you anywhere near as many references as a search engine will, but they are more likely to be on topic.

Web directories usually come equipped with their own keyword search engines that allow you to search through their indices for the information you need.

Important note:  Search engines and  Web directories are being integrated in interesting ways.    For example, if you use the Google search engine and one of the results happens to be found in the Google’s Directory (which is based on the dmoz directory), Google will offer you a link to that section of the directory. Meanwhile, if you conduct your search in the Google directory, Google will order the results according to PageRank, which is   Google’s all-important measure of  “link popularity.”

Google Health Portal: Launched

Friday, June 20th, 2008

The long awaited Google Health has been put live early on, but only mentioned officially by Marissa Mayer later on during the talks. According to Google, with this new free health service you can collect and manage your medical records in one place by developing an online profile, and you can educate yourself about your

Google Health

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Now I think this is a bit silly, it feels as if though Google is taking over every aspect of the average man’s life. I can understand them dominating the advertising and search engine area of the internet, but a line should be drawn! Now they have released a new program entering into healthcare, Google Health, which allows you to input your details regarding your health and medication and get responses regarding diet and such.

It does seem to be a service that would benefit many people, but the problem lies with the fact that it is mostly automated responses from a computer, and not an actual physical analysis done by a doctor (one of the points stated by the U.S. Health Care System). Google responded by saying that people should benefit from as much information as they can, and this also solves the problem of having to move your medical history from one state to another. Furthermore, it seems that they are also getting support from the Bush administration since they support the push to electronically handling hospital/health records.