Why did you search for headache?
May 15
Google has recently announced that they are trying to improve their search results for health-related searches, and collect data that will help them improve health-related tools such as Google Flu. In order to accomplish this, they are conducting an experiment, in which a small random selection of Google users will receive questions from Google when they conduct a health-related search. For instance, if you search for the word “headache” you might get a question that looks like this:
For privacy, Google claims that your answers to these questions are not tied to your Google account, even if you are logged in. However their servers will automatically record information including a cookie, ip address, browser type and language, and the date and time of your answer.
So it makes me wonder, why experiment only with health-related searches? In the future will they consider adding additional questions for other types of searches too, if they feel this will help improve their search results (and ad serving technology)?
