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The consultancy monitored the online environment during the first week of swine flu hysteria and found that the UK government's authoritative information was buried well below sites like Wikipedia, which contains user-generated content.

Government portal Direct.gov.uk made up for a lack of visibility in organic search results by bidding against paid Google search terms to appear at the top of the first page of results.

However, as the week started, this activity found Direct.gov.uk often less visible in paid results than vendors of traditional Chinese medicine.

Blue Latitude said that by the end of the week, this picture was further confused by Direct.gov.uk bidding for keywords in competition with NHS.uk, which the consultancy described as a "misdirection of effort further compounded by the varying levels of quality in information provided by the two resources".

In comparison, Blue Latitude said that the US authorities recognised that the US Centre for Disease Control website would rank highly in organic listings (as one of the few resources to contain authoritative information on the H1N1 virus before the Mexican outbreak was reported), so they made sure that the site's information could be disseminated as widely as possible.

Rather than rely solely on paid-for search terms, a simple widget on the CDC homepage allowed other site owners to easily embed links to all relevant information on their own pages.

This was created in an attempt to ensure that the public was provided with a single authoritative source.

Additionally, the CDC provided its own dedicated for official news updates, and urged users to "retweet" these official statements to their own followers.

Blue Latitude created a map that shows the online environment "through the eyes" of users seeking the most relevant and authoritative information around the pandemic on April 28.

The most visible presence was that of Wikipedia, in the top right quadrant.

Fred Basset, director of strategy at Blue Latitude, said: "The propensity for people to self-diagnose, self-medicate or just create sheer panic is greater than ever, thanks to the vastness of medical information available online and the surprisingly poor governmental understanding of how consumers interact with digital channels.

"This lack of understanding of the digital environment can make organisations look ill-prepared and out of touch, whilst making the job of finding the correct information and calming consumer fears even more difficult."