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. 2022 Jan 28;19(3):1491.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19031491.

Online Information of COVID-19: Visibility and Characterization of Highest Positioned Websites by Google between March and April 2020-A Cross-Country Analysis

Anna Kłak  1 , Jolanta Grygielska  2 , Małgorzata Mańczak  2 , Ewelina Ejchman-Pac  2 , Jakub Owoc  2 , Urszula Religioni  3   4 , Robert Olszewski  2   5
Affiliations

Online Information of COVID-19: Visibility and Characterization of Highest Positioned Websites by Google between March and April 2020-A Cross-Country Analysis

Anna Kłak et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: The WHO has used the term "infodemic" to describe the vast amount of false and true information that was making it difficult for people to find reliable information when they needed it. The infodemic spreads faster than COVID-19 itself. The main objective of the study was to characterize and analyze content about COVID-19 returned by Google during the pandemic and compare it between countries.

Methods: The study was conducted between 30 March and 27 April 2020. The information was searched through local Google websites using the "COVID-19", "Coronavirus", "SARS-CoV-2" and "fake news" keywords. The search was conducted in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Spain, UK and the USA. The total number of the analyzed webpages was 685.

Results: The most frequent types were News websites 47% (324/685) and Governmental 19% (131/685) while the least were Health portals 2% (17/685) and Scientific journals 5% (35/635), p < 0.001. United States and Australia had the highest share of Governmental websites. There was a positive correlation between the amount of preventive information and a number of SARS-CoV-2 infections in countries. The higher the number of tests performed, the higher was the amount of information about prevention available online.

Conclusions: Online information is usually available on news and government websites and refers to prevention. There were differences between countries in types of information available online. The highest positioned (the first 20) websites for COVID-19, Coronavirus and SARS-CoV-2 keywords returned by Google include true information.

Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Google; Internet; SARS-CoV-2; fake news; infodemic; infodemiology; misinformation; online information.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Frequency of key words on different types of webpages (all countries): (a) COVID-19; (b) Coronavirus; (c) SARS-CoV-2.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Frequency of information types in each country, N = 532.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Most frequent types of information on fake news referring to COVID-19 according to countries.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Change in a percentage of websites with information on prevention with number of infected people per million inhabitants.
Figure 5
Figure 5
(a,b) Scatter plots of (a) number of tests and percentage of fake news on prevention and (b) number of infected people and percentage of fake news on prevention.
Figure 6
Figure 6
JAMA score of webpages on search engine result pages (SERPs).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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