A study of user queries leading to a health information website: AfterTheInjury.org

AfterTheInjury.org is a direct to health consumer, empirically-grounded Web-based program that is hosted by an academic medical center. Launched in 2009, it includes information and psycho-education interventional content for parents of injured children. This study analyzes search engine queries that led users to the website in order to better understand the informational needs of users of such a website. Query data were collected for the 2009 calendar year via Google Analytics, a widely used free website statistics and traffic analysis tool. Specific analyses included query length and the presence of question words. Results were compared between external and internal queries. Results from this study were put in the context of existing literature regarding user search behavior. Analyses demonstrated that external search engines were an important source of traffic to AfterTheInjury.org with 1 in 5 visits driven from the most popular search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing. Queries were longer than typical queries (AfterTheInjury query averaged 6.27 terms; typical medical query, 2.3--2.4 terms).

Nearly 1/4 of queries leading to AfterTheInjury.org took the form of questions: 22.7% of external searches were questions with 10.7% of external queries including the term "how". The low "bounce rate" (4.2%) suggested a match between user information needs and the content on AfterTheInjury.org; however, the relatively low number of visits (7,676) given the high number of injured children per year in the US (more than 8,000,000) suggests that parents of injured children with informational needs may not be finding AfterTheInjury.org. These findings highlight the potential utility of query analysis to understand informational needs of users. Query behavior for users of AfterTheInjury.org differed from query behavior for those seeking general information and provide insight into how to improve dissemination strategies for similar health-related websites.