Abtract for the XIV Congress of the
European Association of Urology, Madrid 12-15. March 2003

Search Strategies for the Internet; Introducing the First Search Engine for Urologic Content

Authors:
Eberli, Daniel M.D., Bachmann, Alexander M.D., Konetschny, M.D.*, Gasser, Thomas M.D., Sulser, Tullio M.D.
Urologic Clinics, Basel, Switzerland, *GMS Services, Wiesbaden, Germany

Abstract:
Objectives: The doubling time of knowledge today is about 15 years. Thanks to the Internet one can stay in touch with the newest developments in urology. As one knows from experience the Internet user wastes most of his time searching for content. The goals of this article are to help urologists to find their information quicker, and to introduce a new search engine for urologists.

Method:
Urologic information on the Internet can be divided into three groups: printed articles in journals, information within password-protected areas of the web sites of medical associations, and information spread over the Internet on web pages.

Each group requires different search strategies to produce good results, as will be explained below. We initiated the project called uro-search.com to help urologists to find urologic content on the Internet faster and easier. Through clever programming, this search engine collects web pages of urologic interest into a giant database, which is searchable by keywords.

To demonstrate the power of the search engine for urologists we tested ten difficult keywords and compared the results with those produced by one well-known search engine. We analysed the first ten results generated by the search engine. If the results contained any urologic content one point was given to the search engine.

Results:
The hybrid search engine Uro-search.com demonstrated its effectiveness by earning 83 points. Google.com collected only 15 points. This simple test shows how efficiently Uro-search finds urologic pages within the Internet. The big advantage of Uro-search.com is that the search engine already knows that one is looking for urologic content. This enables Uro-search.com to produce very good results with one keyword only.

Conclusions:
The only way to save search time on the Internet is to use clever search strategies including the choice of the most appropriate search engine. By entering more precise and multiple keywords the results selection improves. For searches on printed medical content we recommend PubMed; for other Internet content, we recommend www.uro-search.com as the fist line search engine.