Google: Searches That Focus on Suicide Now Include Telephone Number to Get Professional Help
Noam Cohen in The New York Times reports that since last Wednesday Google places the telephone number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for queries including "ways to commit suicide" and "suicidal thoughts."
The telephone number is located next to a red telephone icon at the top of the search results before any other content.
Finally, we noticed that adding an extra, related word to a query that triggers the phone number and icon could cause the telephone number not to trigger. Again, "ways to commit suicide" does show the telephone number but "ways to commit suicide overdose" does not.
This is a very difficult but important topic. Providing access to a telephone number and trained expert when a person is searching during a difficult moment could be extremely crucial. Google should be commended for making it "extra" visible. Hopefully, Bing and Bing/Yahoo will do the same thing.
We also hope that Google is able to standardize the query format and terms used to trigger the result.
This is not the first "suggestion" Google provides. Since October, 2009, Google has provided a similar type of result at the top of the page when searching "poison control" and variations on that phrase.
This search produces a "Mr. Yuck" icon along with a poison control center number for the U.S.
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