Doctor, Doctor, I’ve a Pain in My Google!

Many people treat the web as a health encyclopedia and diagnosis tool when they begin to feel some kind of symptom, so much so that Google Search has recognised this and has a new feature, whereby when you type in your symptoms, a list of illnesses that are possibly related to your symptoms pops up.

Google announced the news on the Inside Search blog, and say that this list is generated by their algorithms that “analyze data from pages across the web and surface the health conditions that appear to be related to your search.” However, while this may come as great news for all those who love to self diagnose, Google are quick to point out that: “The list is not authored by doctors and of course is not advice from medical experts.”

It’s fascinating to observe how the web has become a tool for self-diagnosis, providing information that people would have previously consulted hefty health books for, and demonstrates the how the web makes previously expensive, niche information available to anyone with an internet connection – but also is a double edged sword, to return to Google’s point that the list is not advice from doctors. Google obviously can not promote this as sound medical advice because if people were to completely rely on such information found on the web without consulting a doctor, there could be serious consequences.

However, it seems that the feature is yet to be rolled out everywhere, as I tried searching a couple of things but wasn’t presented with a list like the one in the example above, so I went for the example Inside Search used themselves, ‘abdominal pain in my right hand side’, but still was not presented with a list as described in their blog post.