Google has added a brand new feature to medical knowledge panels that are displayed on the right hand side of the search results for some medical related search queries. If you search for some medications on Google, you will now see a new section in that medical knowledge panel that displays “Related Medications”.
When one of these is triggered, a click on any of the results will bring up the specific knowledge panel for each medication.
The related medications doesn’t seem to be used for brand name versus generics, since Google will change to the generic name when you search for a brand name. For example, searching for Advil with show the medical knowledge panel for Ibuprofen. For this particular query, the related medicines seem to all be various types of anti-inflammatory medications, but the knowledge panels detail the types of injuries or medical issues that each medication is used to treat. We have seen others where the related medications are all used to treat a similar medical problem.
Here is the medical knowledge panel for ibuprofen.
When you click on any of the related medications, you see a medical knowledge panel for the medication you click on. For example:
It also shows up for some pretty competitive medication keywords, such as Viagra.
Here is an example of what the search for ibuprofen looked like prior to this latest change:
It isn’t clear if Google has added many new medications to their medical knowledge panels, or if they simply made it easier to find different ones when searching for one. But it does give an interesting way for someone to find other somewhat similar medications when searching for one.
The source might be Micromedex, as it is a new company that is now showing up as a source in the knowledge panel for medication related searches.
Google has definitely been improving their medical knowledge panels that display in their search results. They added a new carousel late last year to some knowledge panels, as well as the addition of brand name medications and increasing the number of medical conditions that trigger these specific knowledge panels.
This change seems to be live for all users.
Jennifer Slegg
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