Friday, August 28, 2009

Google Health Onebox

Google is now showing a special direct result in US searches for certain health-related topics. Enter asthma, for instance, and a box appears with pointers to Google Health and others, the snippet reading “Asthma is an inflammatory disorder of the airways, which causes attacks of wheezing, shortness of breath ...”.

This particular article’s content as hosted at Google Health is provided by health content provider A.D.A.M., and oneboxes like these pointing to Google’s sites are likely to take away some of the traffic to whichever result would otherwise be on top – in the case of this search, an asthma article at Wikipedia. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land asked Google whether they want to include ads at Google Health, and Google replied that (quote Barry’s paraphrase) “it is about getting the answer as quickly as possible to the searcher” and that they have “no current plans or even future plans to add ads to the Google Health property.”

To test this onebox from outside the US, append the search URL with “&gl=us”.

Also see the Google onebox museum.

[Thanks WebSonic!]

Google Health Onebox by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (1+2)

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