WEDNESDAY, Oct. 26, 2022 (HealthDay News) — In most U.S. counties, a Google search for the phrase “ophthalmologist near me” may underrepresent eye doctors, according to a study published online 20 October in JAMA Ophthalmology.
Rebecca R. Soares, MD, of Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, and colleagues examined the representation of ophthalmologists in a Google search for the phrase “ophthalmologist near me.” The analysis included geographic coordinates for 2,955 county centroids in the United States (June 30, 2021), with the top 10 locations and three Google Maps links evaluated.
The researchers found that the overall mean proportion of ophthalmologists from the Google search across all counties was 4,726.97 out of 16,345.93 (28.91 percent), which was lower than the actual proportion of optometrists (15,778 of 41,975; 37.58 percent), giving a difference of 8.67 percent. . Google underrepresented ophthalmologists in 35 of the 52 states and territories (67.3%).
“Google searches for the phrase ‘ophthalmologist near me’ may underrepresent ophthalmologists, potentially underestimating the role of ophthalmologists as eye care professionals,” the authors write. “Ophthalmologists may want to pursue search engine optimization to try to achieve balanced representation online.”
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