title: Health information on internet: quality, importance, and popularity of persian health websites.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Internet has provided great opportunities for disseminating both accurate and inaccurate health information. Therefore, the quality of information is considered as a widespread concern affecting the human life. Despite the increasingly substantial growth in the number of users, Persian health websites and the proportion of internet-using patients, little is known about the quality of Persian medical and health websites.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The current study aimed to first assess the quality, popularity and importance of websites providing Persian health-related information, and second to evaluate the correlation of the popularity and importance ranking with quality score on the Internet.
  
  
  METHODS
  The sample websites were identified by entering the health-related keywords into four most popular search engines of Iranian users based on the Alexa ranking at the time of study. Each selected website was assessed using three qualified tools including the Bomba and Land Index, Google PageRank and the Alexa ranking.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The evaluated sites characteristics (ownership structure, database, scope and objective) really did not have an effect on the Alexa traffic global rank, Alexa traffic rank in Iran, Google PageRank and Bomba total score. Most websites (78.9 percent, n = 56) were in the moderate category (8 ≤ x ≤ 11.99) based on their quality levels. There was no statistically significant association between Google PageRank with Bomba index variables and Alexa traffic global rank (P > 0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Persian health websites had better Bomba quality scores in availability and usability guidelines as compared to other guidelines. The Google PageRank did not properly reflect the real quality of evaluated websites and Internet users seeking online health information should not merely rely on it for any kind of prejudgment regarding Persian health websites. However, they can use Iran Alexa rank as a primary filtering tool of these websites. Therefore, designing search engines dedicated to explore accredited Persian health-related Web sites can be an effective method to access high-quality Persian health websites.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Information Technology, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences, Khorramabad, IR Iran.
authors.forename: Mahnaz
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Samadbeik
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Information Management, School of Health Management and Information Science, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran.
authors.forename: Maryam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ahmadi
authors.affiliation: Health Management and Economics Research Center, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mohammadi
authors.affiliation: Treatment Vice Chancellor Medical Record Department, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, IR Iran.
authors.forename: Beniamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mohseni Saravi
keywords: Evaluation Studies; Health; Internet