Health-related Google searches will now provide information fact-checked by a team of doctors.

Australians can now trust that Dr Google is providing them with reliable information.

Google search results will now show accurate information, fact checked by a panel of doctors and the Mayo Clinic, for over 900 commonly searched for health conditions.

The new "health cards" feature, launched by the internet giant on Wednesday, will include an outline of the condition, symptoms, diagnosis, and prevalence according to age at the top of search results.

For some conditions you'll also see high-quality illustrations from licensed medical illustrators.

With one in 20 online searches related to health, Google says they want to empower their users.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has welcomed the new Google health tool but has issued caution.

Tony Bartone from the AMA says anything that improves or supports a patient's health literacy is a good thing.

"What this has done has improved the quality and accuracy of the information people will get when they do the very frequent health searches because up until now the results of the searches were indiscriminate in terms of their veracity and reliability."

But the information should not be used to form a diagnosis, warned Dr Bartone.

"It is information - it is not knowledge. It is essentially to aid a person's understanding around a certain condition," he said.

"A diagnosis is based upon taking a history, an examination and knowing the past medical history of that patient and a management plan is formulated on all those inputs," said Dr Bartone.
Any health concerns should be discussed with a GP.