Now when someone in the US searches for COVID-19 on Google, they can find information about testing sites for the virus located near them.
Google rolled out the ability to search for testing sites on Friday. The search engine is now able to display information for more than 2,000 COVID-19 testing centres across 43 states in the United States.
It’s not yet known if the functionality will be made available in other countries outside the US such as Australia.
It’s only surfacing locations that have been approved to be published by health authorities, so it’s not going to be able to show all of the testing centres near them. In the case of Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania it isn’t currently able to show any results, The Verge reports.
The addition of testing centres was part of a number of changes to Google’s search results. Now, whenever they search for anything COVID-19 related they’ll see an SOS alert bar on the left side of the page. From there they’ll be able to quickly navigate to information about the virus including symptoms, treatments, news, statistics, and yes, where they can get tested.
Clicking on the “testing” tab brings up this information in San Francisco.
When they click through, they’re shown all of the COVID-19 testing centres on a map along with the requirements to be tested there.
Earlier this month, Apple also started displaying COVID-19 testing centres within Apple Maps. Like Google, the testing centres that are included also have information listed beside them indicating what the requirements are in order to be tested at that particular facility.
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