June 25, 2010 – Google has expanded its search tool to include detailed information on medications. Based on the premise that more reliable information on drugs can be found beyond basic Google searches, this enhancement calls up fast facts about most medications, with the details being supplied by the National Institutes of Health.

VentureBeat shared this news in their article, “Google search adds medication info — upping pharma ad spend?”.   It doesn’t take a genius to see that better drug information will result in more drug-related queries, and therefore more opportunities to advertise medications to a wider audience. With the massive potential for pharmaceutical and health-related search advertising, Google took time to index lucrative, popularized drugs. Hopefully they also took time to ensure complete information since we are talking medical/pharmaceutical information and that isn’t something to do half-way.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.