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.
In the new update, Google has tried to streamline the design as well, and made it easier for you to get to the right section. For instance, if you search “pink eye symptoms” now you will go straight to the symptoms tab instead of to the main information on pink eye.