Health Instant Answers: update and clarification

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:58:00 GMT

While posting on the new Health vertical for Live Search, I wasn't able to show how to get to these answers from just the main Live Search page, and that's because the Instant Answers functionality is just now starting to roll out. I asked John Henson, a Product Manager for the Health Solutions Group about it:

Just as with entertainment and commerce searches, queries that are identified as health-related will show up as “instant answers” at the top of mainline search requests. We are testing a few variations of this answer; you can see the primary one here:

We just started running these answers yesterday for a very small percentage of traffic --- which is why you haven’t seen them yet. Over the next few weeks they will be ramping up to full coverage.

Thanks for checking out the new search --- we’re excited about it! Don’t hesitate to let me know if I can answer any other questions.

As you can see, much of the information that is shown on the https://health.live.com site is shown right on the main page as an Instant Answer, making the information much more easily available.

LiveSide - News blog : Instant Answers

Health Instant Answers: update and clarification