Feeling light-headed? Can’t stop your eyelid from twitching? Suffering from heart palpitations?

For these and other ailments, Ask.com on Tuesday launched Health Smart Answers, which aims to aggregate health information online and become the authoritative source for medical problems large and small.

“We just have never fully addressed health until now,” said Ask.com product manager Scott Grieder.

The new search feature pops up as the top result when a user searches for terms such as “cancer” or “heart attack.” It consists of a thumbnail image, a definition, and links to pages that cover symptoms, prevention, and risk factors. Sponsored search results and general search results appear below these “Smart Answers.”

Mr. Grieder said his company has similar Smart Answers for movie, local map, and business searches dating back as far as 2000. Ask.com has been working for several months to launch the Health Smart Answers after tracking the growth of health queries on the site since 2004.

Mr. Grieder said health searches have grown by one percent each year and now comprise 6 percent of all searches on the site, making health one of the top five search categories.

With Tuesday’s new feature, health searches on Ask.com now link to content from Healthline, Gray’s Anatomy, and Revolution Health.

JupiterResearch analyst Monique Levy said Ask.com’s new approach to health searches makes sense since 58 percent of online users start health searches from a general search engine with no particular destination in mind. Only 16 percent of users go directly to specialty health sites such as WebMD.com.

Although Ask.com still lags far behind Google and Yahoo, Ms. Levy said incorporating a more refined health search function better positions Ask.com to tap into the growth in Internet advertising, which has attracted pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. “Anything that helps people get closer to what they’re looking for is an important and positive development for any search engine,” Ms. Levy said.

She cited Google’s similar health search functions and Microsoft’s recent acquisition of vertical search engine Medstory as other examples.