Google is attempting to refine its health-related search by asking users if they're experiencing the symptoms or conditions theyre Googling about. Google claims it will use the survey to collect real-world statistics on how potentially sick users use the site, perhaps using the data to craft a more granular health-related search experience. Googles health initiatives regarding swine flu recently attracted a great deal of attention.
Google
is performing a short-term experiment involving its users health-related
searches.
The company, claiming it wants to better refine its
health-search-related processes by "understanding how people search when theyre
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 theyre
searching because they, or someone they know, are experiencing that particular
health issue.
Resource Library:
For example, if you search for "headache," Google may ask, "Did
you search because you or someone you know has a headache? Yes/No."
Google says the experiment will be limited.
"Rather than make educated guesses about how many users are
searching for because theyre sick, were running this experiment to collect
real statistics," Dr. Roni Zeiger, Google product manager, and Jeremy Ginsberg,
Google software engineer, wrote in a May 13 corporate blog posting. "This is
not a permanent change, but a short-term experiment. A small percentage of
random health-related searches will trigger the poll question."
According to Google, data collected in the survey will "be
aggregated across thousands of users" and not associated with e-mail addresses
or personal information. The company also claims that the survey data will not
be used for advertising, but only to improve health-related search results and refine
public health trends based on search queries.
Googles health-based efforts have been much in the news
lately.
In late April 2009, as the world was temporarily seized by
fears of a massive swine-flu pandemic, Google used its Flu Trends site to track the spread
of the disease based on peoples searches for certain keywords.
We found that there is a close relationship between how
many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu
symptoms, the site explained at the time. "Some search queries tend to be
popular exactly when flu season is happening and are therefore good indicators
of flu activity."