ASK Smart Answers Adds Health

ASK announced today the addition of health related answers to their “Smart Answers” engine. The answers which made available through a cooperation with healthline.com, a health search engine, cover a wide range of medicine each with links to related topics such as Composition, Dosage, Forms, Interactions, Precautions and Side Effects.

Here’s the results for a simple search for Naproxen on ASK:

From the official press release:

Ask.com and other major consumer-facing businesses are leveraging Healthline’s content to quickly obtain accurate and relevant medical definitions, images, and links to doctor-reviewed content to enhance the consumer experience and improve the brand ensuring the consumer experience.

As search engines move more and more information onto an “all-inclusive” format, much of the results will become obsolete and the competition for the top slots will become even more fierce. Will it stop the growth of information distribution on the internet? I think that certain verticals will definately slow down and introduction of such “health answers” across the board could be the first blow to many companies who specialize in just that.

Guess the next competition will be on who has the superior product which will be sought after by the engines for a possible partnership…