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Google's pretty good about letting users pass on to other sites, and that is, after all, a search engine's main function.  Most companies prefer it when people stick around, however, and Google Health may play an important part in keeping them close to Mountain View properties.

What Hitwise calls the "Health and Medical" category used to represent a hole in Google's product lineup.  If someone wanted to go from Google to a "Computers and Internet" site, their options included YouTube, Google Groups, Google Talk, and Orkut.  Where "Shopping and Classifieds" sites were concerned, Google Product Search and Google Base were on the menu.

 Google Health's Opponents
(Picture Credit: Hitwise)

But Google was left sending about three percent of its traffic to outside health and medical sites.

So, as Hitwise's Heather Hopkins predicted it would, Google appears to be making an attempt to plug this gap.  It faces some tough competition - household names like WebMD, Yahoo, and the Mayo Clinic have a head start - but at least it's providing an alternative.

Hopkins identified one other empty product spot in the "Entertainment - Games" category.  For whatever it's worth, Googlecasinogames.com was on a recent list of odd domain names registered to the company.