Many internet tools seek to identify what disease a person has based on symptoms described by the user. A new study finds these online symptom checkers are rarely correct and could be harmful. Australian researchers at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia did the study. Their results were published in the Medical Journal of Australia. Online symptom checkers are commonly found through major search engines. Google, for example, gets an estimated 70,000 health-related searches every minute. The study examined 36 international internet-based symptom checkers. The tools ask a series of questions about the symptoms users are experiencing and then use that information to identify conditions the users might suffer from. Some tools also advise users on whether to seek medical attention. The study found that overall, symptom checkers produced the correct diagnosis as the first result 36 percent of the time. The tools predicted the right diagnosis within the top three results 52 percent of the time.