How does NIH get these logos in the SERPs

[EGOL]

When I search google.com for "OCD" or "bipolar" or other medical problems the #1 organic position is held by the NIH.gov website and a logo accompanies their listing.   (see below)

I see the logo in Chrome, IE and Firefox.

Are you seeing that too?

I see this logo with lots of NIH.gov listings in the SERPs.  Any idea if that is something that webmasters can trigger or is that something google is controlling?

health-40.gif

[Dan-Petrovic]

It's either part of Google getting smarter and detecting absolute authoritative results for a search vertical or... Google starting to steer away from their algorithm only and no-humans policy in results and marking certain things by hand.

I did a quick search for that image in Tin Eye (nothing) and in Google (1 result) so it seems like this is Google's thing only and the image is designed to highlight a verified health result.

This reminds me of comment that Mr. Weitz from Bing said about the future of search and how ridiculous it might be to judge the validity of results by link popularity in some cases:

"An expert from Bing, Stefan Weitz, notes that relevancy in search is based on PageRank. PageRank determines the position of a web page based on the analysis of links referring to that page. He notes that relying solely on this model to find, for instance, the best cancer hospital is ridiculous."

[EGOL]

Thank you, Dejan.  I hope that Google is getting smarter at recognizing absolute authority.

I think that for matters of Health, it is very very important for Google to return good results.  Lots of people use information on websites to make very important health decisions.

Imagine what happens when a person finds crap about an important health issue but does not realize that they are on  Bipolar-Make-Munny-Wit-Adsense.com

[damionbrown]

Might it be significant that the NIH results don't have the +1 button, nor Instant Preview, when they're in the SERPs?

I'm joining some pretty distant dots here, but that might suggest that they're part of a separate search index? I can certainly see how providing one authoritative link for a very precise medical query would enhance search quality.

[EGOL]

Interesting... so, you think google might be giving NIH outside priority in the SERPs for these queries?

[Dan-Petrovic]

Counting results on the page... yes this is a separate result completely.

Unless Google introduced 11 results per page and I was not aware of it

[damionbrown]

It's a hell of a joining-of-dots, and I hate to utter anything along the lines of "two indexes" or "supplemental index" etc. But the NIH listings behave differently in the SERPs, and I can see how there's greater inherent value in a set of search results that returns verified authority links for medical queries than a set of search results that doesn't.

[Dan-Petrovic]

That's right. This is no ordinary result and is an extra much like news at the bottom.

[EGOL]

Nice diagnosis.  Thanks Dejan!

[Dan-Petrovic]

Panda took care of half of that rubbish didn't it?

[EGOL]

Maybe half... but I saw a lot of bipolar rubbish with ads today.  Check this out... http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=bipolar+adsense

[Dan-Petrovic]

lol @ http://www.haidt.com/google-adsense-f10/bipolar-antidepressant-t29644.html

[rmteamseo]

This has been around for a while now, its called Google Onebox result. OneBox results are shown for queries that can be answered instantly or when a direct link can be offered.

You can see the feature here http://www.google.com/help/features.html

[Dan-Petrovic]

Thanks for that URL! I didn't realise there were so many.

[AlanMosley]

I have often thought along these lines, having a encyclipiedia and dictionary in the results for many terms is more impoartant than relying on the algo. in fact I thiink rand did a article stateing things like "results need freshness", stateingg that the results will include a new result as well as a research result and other sort of results aswell of what the algo brings up.
A query for a type of car, may mean you want to buy, hire, fix, see race video, find images or learn about. results should try to get all these types of results even if they do not deserver high rank by algo alone.

[EGOL]

Thank you Yousaf,  great information.

[rmteamseo]

You are most welcome.