Google Search, Maps to specifically label healthcare facilities offering abortion services

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and put a stop to federal abortion rights means a lot of things. Aside from women directly affected by the said result, companies like Google also have to make adjustments. In relation to this, and after being pushed by US lawmakers to improve abortion searches, the tech giant told TechCrunch has decided that it will specifically be more precise in labeling healthcare facilities offering abortion services on Search and Maps.

“When people turn to Google to find local information, we aim to help them easily explore the range of places available so they can determine which are most helpful to them,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch. “For a number of categories where we’ve received confirmation that places offer specific services, we’ve been working for many months on more useful ways to display those results. We’re now rolling out an update that makes it easier for people to find places that offer the services they’ve searched for, or broaden their results to see more options. We followed our standard testing and evaluation process to confirm that these updates are more helpful for people.”

It is an important step for Google, especially since it is an essential information resource nowadays for many individuals. In recent reports, Google became a center of criticism for showing results for abortion clinics. Instead of directing users to the right locations, the results suggested misleading places like crisis pregnancy centers and other institutions urging women to drop plans for abortion. In a report from The Guardian, it was found that one in 10 searches for an abortion led women to pregnancy crisis centers. The same thing was discovered by Bloomberg, saying a quarter of the top 10 searches led to such places. 

In the said changes, Google will label a place that specifically “Provides abortions.” According to the company, the confirmation for such information could come from authoritative data sources and actual calls that Google will initiate. On the other hand, if there are no confirmations available, Google will put “Might not provide abortions” labels on relevant results. Unfortunately, according to TechCrunch, the same label will apply to crisis pregnancy centers instead of directly describing them as non-abortion institutions.

On a positive note, Google underlined that searches for abortion would expand not just to locations near a specific user. If there are no abortion centers relevant to the user, Google and Search will offer broader results in terms of location through the “search father away” option. The same update will be applied to other medical clinics and centers and soon to other places and searches.