Received: 8 May 2017 | Accepted: 23 June 2017 DOI: 10.1002/nau.23359 ORIGINAL CLINICAL ARTICLE Patient-targeted websites on overactive bladder: What are our patients reading? Aisling A. Clancy 1 | Duane Hickling 2,3 | Laura Didomizio 4 | May Sanaee 5 | Fady Shehata 1 | Rebekah Zee 1 | Hisham Khalil 1 1 Division of Urogynecology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Ontario 2 Division of Urology, Department of Surgery, The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Ontario 3 Ottawa Health Research Institute, The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Ontario 4 Division of Urogynecology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario 5 Division of Urogynecology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia Correspondence Aisling A. Clancy, Division of Urogynecology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Ottawa Hospital, 501 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON. Email: aclancy@toh.ca Aims: Patients often turn to the Internet for information on medical conditions. We sought to evaluate the quality and readability of highly visible websites on overactive bladder (OAB). Methods: A survey of 42 consecutive patients attending outpatient urogynecology clinics was performed to identify the most commonly used Internet search engines and search terms for information on OAB. The three most commonly used search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!) were then queried using the three most commonly used search terms. The first 20 relevant websites from each search were reviewed. After excluding duplicates, 35 websites were analyzed. Website quality of information on OAB was evaluated using the DISCERN score, JAMA benchmark criteria, and Health on the Net code (HONcode) accreditation status. Readability was assessed using the Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) and Dale-Chall indices. Results: Websites were classified as advertisement/commercial (31%), health portal (29%), professional (26%), patient group (6%), and other (9%). The overall mean DISCERN score was 44 ± 18 (maximum possible score of 80). Three websites (9%) met all four JAMA benchmark criteria. Seventeen percent of websites provided adequate information on content authorship and contributions. Median SMOG and Dale-Chall indices were 9.9 (IQR 9.3-11.2) and 9.0 (IQR 8.1-9.4), respectively. Nine websites (26%) were HONcode certified. Conclusions: Popular websites on OAB are of low quality, written for a high school to college-level readership, and often lack adequate information to assess the potential for commercial bias. Patients should be cautioned that incomplete and potentially biased information on OAB is prevalent online. KEYWORDS Internet, overactive, patient care, social media, urinary bladder Abbreviations: HONcode, Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct; ICC, Intraclass correlation coefficient; OAB, Overactive bladder; SMOG, Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook. David Ginsberg led the peer-review process as the Associate Editor responsible for the paper. Neurourology and Urodynamics. 2017;1–10. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nau © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1