January 09, 2006
Google Scholar gets better at indexing PubMed content, but it's still several months behind.
With over a year since the launch of Google Scholar, I thought it was time to revisit my test of Google Scholar's indexing of PubMed content. In my Sitelines article, Google Scholar is a Full Year Late Indexing PubMed Content of February 8 2005, I ran a test to see how GS's coverage of PubMed stacked up. Using a randomly selected list of clinical trials on breast cancer (I wanted important articles that no physician would want to miss) spanning approximately 18 months of publication coverage, I discovered that GS was about one full year behind in coverage of PubMed.
So, has anything changed? To re-test the coverage, I chose another 10 clinical trials on breast cancer from the current PubMed database, randomly selected but spanning the period June 2005 - December 2005. The conclusion? The latest PubMed citation to appear in both Google Scholar was from August 2005 -- almost 5 months ago. Yes, it's an improvement over the last test, and a significant one. However, for physicians and those who need to know, PubMed continues to be an important tool for accessing the current medical literature.