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Google Search Adds Medication Information to Its Results

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Rolando Cabral • 50 Comments

If you are like me who wants to know more about the medication I’m taking, you will be finding yourself on Google searching for information about those medications. Apparently, Google did notice that. They decided to make their results smarter by adding a more detailed information about these drugs. They said that, this data comes from the US FDA and the Department of Veterans affairs.

Here’s what Aaron Brown, Google’s Senior Product Manager has to say about this.

We get a lot of queries for medicine on Google. So to make it quick and easy for you to learn about medications, we’ll start showing key facts — side effects, related medications, links to in-depth resources, and more — right on the search results page.This data comes from the U.S. FDA, the National Library of Medicine, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others. It’s part of the Knowledge Graph — our project to map out billions of real-world things, from famous artists to roller coasters to planets (and now medications). We hope you find this useful, but remember that these results do not act as medical advice.

So next time you are searching for the word Viagra online, don’t be surprised if a detailed information about it shows up at the right side of your search results. At least you will be informed that it is contraindicated for your heart disease but you are still taking it (without your doctors knowledge). Hopefully, it will stop you from buying it illegally over the internet.

 

 

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