Google has expanded the poison control and suicide prevention special search results to another 13 countries, the search engine giant announced yesterday.

Google, which processes over one billion internet search requests every day, started the initiative in the US last autumn, after receiving an email from a mother in the US who had difficulty finding the hotline number for poison control after her daughter swallowed something that could have been poisonous (the daughter recovered).

Towards the end of last year, they began to display the national hotline number for the American Association of Poison Control Centers, whenever someone in the US typed keywords like “poison control” into the search engine.

Soon afterwards, said Dr Roni Zeiger, Chief Health Strategist for Google, the company heard from “Googlers whose lives had been affected by suicide and who thought that suicide prevention could be another case for a special search result”.

So in Spring they added another feature: whenever someone in the US typed in search terms related to suicide, Google would return the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at the top of the results page.

“Since then, our friends at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline have reported a 9 percent increase in legitimate calls to its hotline,” said Zeiger.

Following positive feedback from users and the hotline partners, the company has now expanded the special search results for “poison control” and “suicide prevention” to another 13 countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

In each of these countries, where the service is installed, when a person types in search terms connected to suicide or poisoning, they will see the relevant emergency number for their national hotline appear at the top of the top of the results page accompanied by an iconic image of a red telephone.

For example, in the UK, if you type the word “suicide” into the Google search box, the results page shows the hotline number for the Samaritans. In Spain, if you type in the term “telefono toxicologia” you get the number for Spain’s National Institute of Toxicology.

“Each country will see one or more of these results,” said Zeiger.

“We looked for hotlines that are available nationally and 24/7 and we hope to add additional countries in the future,” he added.

Zeiger said they are also introducing a new special search result for other common emergency contacts, such as for fire, medical and police emergencies.

Google intend to make the information easy to find for residents and also travellers, especially as emergency numbers vary from country to country.

In the meantime, it appears that the service is going through some teething problems in the UK.

The BBC reports that only searches including the word “suicide” appear to bring up the direct Samaritans number, and that general searches on the subject that do not include this word appear to “return a welter of unfiltered web results”.

But the Samaritans welcomed Google’s initiative, calling it a “positive step”.

Chief Executive Catherine Johnstone told the press that they hope the new search tool will “encourage distressed or suicidal people to seek help from a safe source”.

She went on to describe the internet as a vast and growing resource that helps people find lots of information, most of which is helpful, but sometimes dangerous.

“It is therefore important that vulnerable and distressed people are steered towards safe places such as Samaritans,” said Johnstone.

Sources: Google, Samaritans, BBC.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD