Google Adds Medication Look-Up To SERPs

[engine]

From part of Google's Knowledge Graph, it now includes medication info in the SERPs.

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.
Google Adds Medication Look-Up To SERPs [insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk]

This data comes from the U.S. FDA, the National Library of Medicine, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others.

[gehrlekrona]

Lots of sites going down now when Google gets into their areas. There won't be anything left that will make you money since google aol take over the profitable parts of the internet. All you can do now is to provide Google with informational sites they can scrape.

[onebuyone]

All you can do now is to provide Google with informational sites they can scrape.

or provide google with incorrect informations, just for LOLs.. and maybe some profit in long run:)

[jimbeetle]

Does Google really think I'm going to trust their cobbled together "facts" as actual facts?

[Lame_Wolf]

Does Google really think I'm going to trust their cobbled together "facts" as actual facts?

There are enough fools out there that believe in wiki, so to answer your question... yes. (sadly)

[TypicalSurfer]

This data comes from the U.S. FDA, the National Library of Medicine, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others.

Selling free gov't publications is typically called "fraud". This is not a "knowledge graph" at all.

[Propools]

Though, I think one should step back and look at the possibility of their just getting better coded information.
Is this just a more granular effect of data as specified @ schema.org?

Thing > MedicalEntity > MedicalIntangible > MedicalEnumeration > MedicineSystem >

So, I don't know if I would say they are scraping data if this is in fact how they are collecting the data. ;)

[MrSavage]

Shouldn't this be posted in the political Google forum? Seems slightly misguided here. Is the SEO part of this story just going to get political and get people suspended etc for voicing their true feelings?

I can't say here what I think about it. What I can say is that nothing surprises me regarding getting less organic traffic from Google. It's our internet, but the eyes are not "ours". You can invest your time into a website that will be very self serving in a couple years if you can't see that already. Enjoy what you have now and sell what's doing well now. That's my opinion of SEO and this story. Sell now if there is a chance.

Seriously though, are we going to post here each time organic traffic is eroded and when Google can provide answers on their page which takes your site out of the equation? Like I said, this belongs in politics forum.

[lucy24]

This data comes from the U.S. FDA, the National Library of Medicine, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others.

Will google dot othercountries give the same US-based information, or will it be nationally tailored? Or is this a strictly google dot com venture?

[tedster]

I've checked out the medication results for several different types - prescription and non-prescription, and what I see looks like it really does serve the public well without hurting traditional SEO the way other "Knowledge Graph" implementations did.

First, the left hand side, where the eye is naturally drawn, always contains the traditional 10 blue links - no proprietary Google properties at the top or within those results. The Knowledge Graph results are on the right and always in the same standardized format: a collection of types of information such as side effects, warnings, how to use, "may treat", other drugs in the same class and so on. And here's the best part - each of those standardized format sections is a blue link to a website.

Having done a lot of medicine searches in my time, I know how hard it is to find all this information in one place, so the top level "collection" that Google offers is a real service to the end user.

However, I agree with the question that lucy24 asked - will this US-centric collection of information be the same offered to search users from other countries? Only time will tell, I suppose, but some medications have very different sets of information depending on the country, including essential information such as whether a prescription is required.

[Dave_Hybrid]

Makes little difference if the ten blue links are in the same place or not if no one needs to click them.

[diberry]

This just confirms something I've been suspecting: Google sees themselves as a curator of information now. In the past, they just presented us with the info and let us sort out the good from the bad.

But the current Congress has made it clear they think Google has a public responsibility to sort the info for us. They don't understand what them algo thangs is, so in their ignorance they expect the SERPs to resemble an expert human review of the entire web. And hey, that's an interesting notion, but it's so not Google's business model.

So Google kind of has to move in this direction whether they like it or not. And to avoid hiring expensive experts on medicine to review the SERPs, I think they'll just cherry pick sites associated with top medical research/governance. That way if someone claims Google misled them about a medication (and medication lawsuits are HUGE business in the US), Google can just say, "Hey, it wasn't us - it was these guys."

[Zivush]

Having done a lot of medicine searches in my time, I know how hard it is to find all this information in one place, so the top level "collection" that Google offers is a real service to the end user.

I am a heavy user of this knowledge graph too lately.
Must say that at the beginning I took it with a bit of suspicious. Since I've start using it to collect quick data, it is a great service no matter how this service beats sites' traffic.

[lucy24]

If the sites they're short-circuiting are all dot gov and dot edu, at least they're not seriously cutting into anyone's individual livelihood.

[TypicalSurfer]

I'm not wholly comfortable with google stepping up as the new Ministry of Information but the market will be the final arbiter of that role. Making the worlds information available via a search engine worked for them, we'll have to see if their new gig does.

People like choice and enjoy the hunt, the google/gov't partnership as it relates to "knowledge" may just be perceived by many as "officialdom", not very interesting nor necessarily useful and hey, nothing says "wow factor" like government publications. lol