Google is enriching its health search results with its AI Overviews and is launching a new feature: “What People Suggest.” The goal? To better answer your complex medical questions while giving you access to other patients' experiences who have the same health concerns.
Key takeaways:
- Until now cautious about health AI Overviews, Google is expanding the health questions that AI Overviews answer.
- The feature is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and on mobile.
- Google launches "What People Suggest" to highlight advice from other patients.
- Google promises information that is always verified and relevant: be wary of such promises…
Google strengthens its health answers with AI Overviews
At its annual event The Check Up, Google announced new health features in its search engine. Now, its well-known AI Overviews will cover thousands of new medical topics, where only certain popular topics were previously covered. Health being among the topics YMYL, it had until now been subject to increased precautions.
This improvement is based on the advances of the Gemini model, designed to better understand complex queries and synthesize relevant, verified, and clinically accurate medical information.
Internet users will thus be able to ask longer, more nuanced questions, for example: What treatments can relieve chronic pain related to endometriosis?, and get a clear answer based on reliable sources.
An international and mobile expansion
These AI health overviews go beyond the English-speaking realm. Google is gradually rolling out this feature in Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese, prioritizing mobile devices (and no, still not in French).
By making these summaries available in other languages, Google's stated goal is to reduce inequalities in access to quality medical information, worldwide. Let's hope this doesn't lead to misinformation and that Google properly verifies the sources.
The "What People Suggest" feature
Major new feature announced by Google: the "What People Suggest". Thanks to artificial intelligence, this feature analyzes online discussions on Reddit, Twitter, Quora and elsewhere to extract patient experience feedback on a specific topic.
For example: Suppose you suffer from arthritis and are looking for how other patients adapt during their exercise sessions? Google will present you with tips and tricks shared by other internet users others with the same condition, grouped by topic and accessible with one click.
Currently available only on mobile in the United States, this feature highlights patients' lived experience. But even there, it is difficult to verify the accuracy of patients' statements coming from forums and social networks. Advice should be taken with caution and potentially verified with a doctor.
A challenge for health sites' visibility
With this new feature, health-specialist sites will have to adapt their SEO strategies. Indeed, these AI Overviews and the promotion of patient testimonials could change the way sites appear in search results, pushing them into the background.
But it also opens up new visibility opportunities, notably by integrating the feature People's Suggestions by highlighting patient reviews or by becoming a source for the AI Overviews.
A global health strategy for Google
These developments are part of a broader Google strategy around digital health:
- Medical records API to better manage your health data.
- Pulse detection on Pixel Watch 3 FDA-certified.
- AI co-scientist to accelerate biomedical research.
- TxGemma, open AI models for drug discovery.
- Capricorn, an AI tool dedicated to pediatric oncology.
The article “AI Overviews and health: Google now provides answers to your medical questions” was published on the site Abondance.
