It’s always best to see a trained professional when you think you’re sick, but that doesn’t stop a significant chunk of the population from searching up their symptoms on the Internet and drawing their own conclusions. Since Google can’t stop you from doing this, the company wants to at least do what it can to make sure you’re getting the right information, which is why Google has updated its database of health conditions that can be accessed through Google Search to include more than 900 conditions.
Google announced today that is massively upgrading its database of health conditions in Google search, and more than doubling the actual number of conditions to over 900. The feature, which launched last February, displays basic info on symptoms, treatments, and prevalence when you search for things like diseases. One of the reasons Google cites for the update is an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease early in August in New York City. Legionnaires is a rare and potentially fatal form of pneumonia, but many people probably didn’t know that, as Google searches for it rose over 1000%. “Indeed, health conditions continue to be among the most important things people ask Google about, and one of our most popular features,” Google wrote in a blog post. Yes, because most of us are secret hypochondriacs. Google will also release a “Download PDF” option, so you can print out the information for when you inevitably try to walk into the doctor’s office and give your own diagnosis. Google says this has “been a top request from doctors,” probably because they were tired of arguing with patients who misread symptoms on the internet.
