Diagnosis Google

By Brad

eWeek reports that in an effort to make health-related searches more relevant, Google is conducting an experiment where they ask searchers whether they’re suffering from symptoms:

The company, claiming it wants to better refine its health-search-related processes by “understanding how people search when they’re feeling sick,” wants to start differentiating between users searching for health-related topics purely for research purposes and those searching for those topics in order to find out more about a personal health issue.

In order to do so, searches for certain health topics will produce a small dialog box at the bottom of the screen, asking the user if they’re searching because they, or someone they know, are experiencing that particular health issue.

For example, if you search for “headache,” Google may ask, “Did you search because you or someone you know has a headache? Yes/No.”