The search giant decided to change the way it displays search queries: now medical facts will be displayed directly in its results.The medical data is now integrated in the Google’s Knowledge Graph, which underpins its instant search results and powers Google Now personal assistant and application. This means that you don’t have to click now to get an answer to your health questions.

The company already presents dictionary definitions, schedules for major sporting events and Wikipedia extracts in such a way. In fact, Knowledge Graph is a built-in encyclopedia that pulls in data from a number of sources.

Google found out that 5% of its searches are health-related. Now it will show typical symptoms, treatments and other basic facts. This move is part of the company’s push into health, along with its health and fitness data service and apps Google Fit. However, while Knowledge Graph tries to put useful, relevant data at the top of generic searches, the accuracy of medical data is of primary importance. This is why Google has cooperated with doctors from the non-profit Mayo Clinic to curate and check the data for accuracy. This means that each piece of medical data presented by Google will be checked by a dozen of different physicians.

As you know, medical advice is strictly regulated in the United States: for example, the 23andMe geno typing project that was partly sponsored by Google was forced to stop giving out health data on genetic diseases by the FDAmore than a year ago. Hopefully, the company will avoid such action in the future, as the new way of presenting search results were not intended as medical advice, but rather for only informational purposes only.

The new service will start with providing data on 400 medical conditions – from diabetes to measles – which will represent 1/10 of all health searches on Google. The company promised to expand the service beyond the United State sin the future.

In the meantime, Knowledge Graph used to be criticized for encroaching on existing publishers, thus abusing its market position as the top search provider and gate to the worldwide web for most of the western world. Perhaps, the same may happen again, since there is a size able industry around providing health data on the Internet, with sites fighting for search traffic with the primary focus on driving ad views.