Paging Dr. Google: Google rolls out symptom-related direct answers on mobile

Google says it worked with a team of doctors, experts from Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic to curate information.

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Google announced today that it is rolling out new symptom-related direct answers on mobile.

According to the announcement, searches for specific symptoms like “headache on one side” will display a list of related conditions, while a search for an individual symptom such as “headache” will return a description of the symptom, self-treatment options and possible health issues related to the symptom that may necessitate a doctor’s visit.

Google says it worked with a team of medical doctors, experts at Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic when pulling together information for symptom-related searches, and that its symptom-related information is curated from “high-quality medical information” pulled from the Knowledge Graph.

[blockquote cite = “Official Google Blog”]By doing this, our goal is to help you to navigate and explore health conditions related to your symptoms, and quickly get to the point where you can do more in-depth research on the web or talk to a health professional.[/blockquote]

Google says one percent of its searches are symptom-related.

The new symptom-related search results are being rolled out exclusively on mobile in the coming days, and only in English in the US. Google says it plans to include more symptom-related searches and will eventually extend such search results globally in other languages.


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Amy Gesenhues
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Amy Gesenhues was a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.

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