A reporter emailed me the other day about an article on health related search engines that she is writing for the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately because I am a medial librarian (not the average consumer) she is not interested in my opinion (or that of other medical librarians I am guessing) on the resources like HealthLine and Mamma Health. She is primarily interested in regular health care consumers and whether they have used specific health/medical search engines and whether they have found them to be helpful.

I do not have a consumer health library so I don't see that many patients or consumers. My knowledge of whether the general public is using these health search engines is limited.
So I am asking medical librarians in consumer health libraries and public librarians....Do you notice the public using health related search engines? What sort of health search engines are they using? Would you personally direct any users to these engines? Why or Why not? What do you think consumers get from these engines and are they satsified with the results?

I am just curious. I probably have not used Mamma Health or Healthline other than to evaluate them. My health search engine of choice for me and consumers would be MedlinePlus. But do you think regular consumers even know about these other search engines, or do that just "Google it?"