Want to learn more? Our Pharma Search Engine Marketing specialists provided the below brief to our clients last week, and I wanted to share it with you all as well. Did your digital agency partner let you know about it already? Hopefully so ... but we're learning that not everyone was aware of the change. Google hasn't exactly been promoting it much either. Hat tip to our search dudes Dave and Nathan for their insights.
On June 21st, Google launched a new feature in search results that they are calling “Medication Search.” This new feature is a partnership with NIH that will provide more detailed information about medications directly from the search results page. Now, if you search for a particular drug by brand name, the official product site will no longer be the top result displayed in Google’s results. Through their partnership with the NIH, Google will display government pages containing detailed information about the product (what it is, side effects, how to take, dietary instruction, etc.).
While this feature is still very new, the Intouch search team wanted to make all our clients aware of this update and the potential concerns and opportunities this new feature creates:
Concerns
The primary concern with this new feature relates to the way in which users interact with search engine results pages. Common statistics claim that 47% of all searchers will click on the #1 organic result for this search, and that percentage drops to 12% for listings in the #2 position. From our experience and through data analysis of our pharma sites we manage, we know that the brand name is by far the top natural search term. This is largely due to the fact that Brand.com typically owns the #1 position for brand name searches. With this new feature, brand.com will be dropped to the #2 position, which we believe will lead to a drastic decrease in natural search referrals for that term.
While the new feature has only been live for a few days, a quick analysis shows that we have seen a decline in visits from brand name searches by an aggregated total of 30% when compared to last Tuesday (June 15th). Some brands have seen as much as a 65% drop while others have not yet been impacted by this change in Google search results.
Opportunities
While there are some very strong concerns about this new turn of events, this also opens up an opportunity for pharmaceutical SEO to evolve. Brand name searches are a major traffic driver for most pharmaceutical brand.com sites, but with the potential significant decrease in natural search traffic from their top keyword, this opens up the opportunities for pharma SEO to engage long-tail terms. These are terms which individually have lower search volume and lower competition. These terms, if grouped together, can bring more traffic and more relevant users to a given site.
In short, further integration of SEO strategy into overall online brand planning can help offset some of the losses that will incurred at the expense of this new search feature.
I've blogged in the past about Big Government going after pharma and pharma marketers. At the risk of sounding political, this latest move by NIH and Google U.S. feels more like Google China to me. And if you are into the political implications of this (my husband is a card-carrying Libertarian so he was all over it) here's some perspective from Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine quoting our search expert Dave Anderson.
What do you think? Is this move by Google in everyones' best interest, or is the government exerting a bit too much control? Did Google ultimately make the change to get more money out of Pharma paid search? Should there be more transparent disclosures from Google about this change?
The implications - to me - should be a bit frightening to us all.
UPDATE: Here's a little more information and context on the switch from Search Engine Land.
11 comments:
Because medical information is so often searched for, it makes sense for FDA approved drugs to have an official link at the top rather than an internet pharmacy, the company website (which is regulated), or a witch-doctor who has a great substitute.
I might add a quick link to the Prescribing Information for professional searchers and not just the patient guide.
Thanks for your comment and your perspective, Chris. It's a great point regarding internet pharmacies and providing a more direct PI link for healthcare professionals. I guess I just wish they were more transparent about what exactly is going on, and also ... if Google is letting entities - the government or anyone else - control "organic" search results, isn't it blurring the lines between organic and sponsored links?
Wendy,
Hold on a minute! This is NOT content developed by gov't. If you actually clickthrough on the links in these ads, you'll find pages hosted on an NIH site, but the content is provided solely by the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (ASHP).
ASHP is an advocacy group that does lobbying and carries out other advocacy functions.
ASHP partnered with Consumers Union, the independent nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, "to bring the highest quality and most reliable drug information to consumers through its Consumer Drug Reference." This is what you see when you clickthrough, ie, "AHFS Consumer Medication Information".
So, it is more accurate to say that this information is from "BIG CONSUMER," not "BIG GOVERNMENT."
I would also note that ASHP receives ample funding from the pharmaceutical industry through advertising in its journals and big-ticket displays at its annual meeting -- I know, I have attended these meetings. It also provides CME to its members, which I am sure is sponsored in part by pharma companies.
Wendy,
Thank you for articulating what I've been feeling since I first encountered this new approach. I am crafting this response as a concerned citizen not as a marketer. I feel that this is the first step in censorship. Dictating what information I should be exposed to, in the name of protecting my well-being is deceptive. I will be bold enough to say that it violates our freedom to expression which as you know is protected by the 1st amendment. The government in concert with Google have made it clear that their voice will be heard above all others. If I wanted to live in a society where there is a dictatorship of the proletariat I would move to China.
Have I stopped using Google as my primary engine? Yes. Have I stopped using them completely? No, as marketer I need to see what is occurring in the marketplace. None the less, all I can say is that I am looking forward to seeing what happens and that I hope Google has a good crisis management plan in place........
Thanks again,
John Wes Green
@johnwesgreen
pharma-emrm-evangelist.com
Wendy you make a great point about blurring the lines between paid and organic. And, isn't the FDA/government then really 'promoting' as well? Do they hold themselves to the same standards as industry? Consider the following:
1. Not all drugs show up (Symbyax, Adcirca, etc.). Is this because the spiders and bots haven't gotten to them yet? Google and NIH need to pull back the curtain and explain in more detail what they are doing, why, and the transparency of the relationship.
2. The NIH posts may be outdated and communicate outdated information. One search (confidential as it is a client's product) yield an NIH page from April 0f 2005. Since then, the label on the product has been expanded to include additional indications, safety information, etc...yet the April 2005 NIH listing does not reflect this information.
How is that helping patients? Ranking organically the WRONG information in the number 1 slot?
The NIH should receive a warning letter from the FDA!
Would love to hear other comments on this.
Great comments everyone. Seems like the more we dig into this, the more questions arise ...
Maybe I got lucky, or it was a Freudian slip, but being a good European I typed in this:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=glivec&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
And got both the sponsored site and the official international brand site first.
The NIH site does appear to hold true for all the US oncology brand names I typed in though. Still, it is shocking and disquieting.
My biggest grump is that when clicking through to the NIH link is that the information is often out of date.
Typing in big cancer drugs such as Gleevec or Avastin, and you get information that was last updated in 2007 or 2008 and it's missing new indications.
That sucks. At least the branded sites usually have the most up to date PI and indication information.
I have to say that this didn't come as a surprise for me. The writing has been on the wall for a while since Google added their One Box for health terms back in August. Bing added their version in January and included drug information. I wrote about this back then: http://www.doseofdigital.com/2010/01/how-google-and-bing-plan-eliminate-the-need-for-webmd/
I don't quite see the issue the same as you or some of the other commenters. Google isn't censoring anything. They're putting content where they think it belongs based on what they think their users want. I'd guess that for most Americans, they'd rather get a blurb about their drug from a source vetted by the NIH than from a pharma company. Who do they trust more?
Google has no obligation to ensure that a pharma company's brand.com site is at the top of the results when someone searches for that brand. Miraculously, some pharma brands don't show up as the top result for their brand name because they have really poor SEO practices. Should Google be required to move them to top so that it's fair for everyone? Google can change their algorithm overnight to ensure that it never indexes brand.com sites. Of course, they won't do this, but they could and we'd have no recourse. To @johnwesgreen's point, Google censors A LOT of stuff and when I mean censor, I mean it doesn't index it at all so it doesn't ever come up in search results. You're probably glad it doesn't, as you might object to the content, but what about the rights of these publishers? Besides, Google isn't unlisting any sites, just moving the order.
I think the "long tail" keyword suggestion from your search team is a really strong idea and one I'd encourage everyone to look into. And, don't forget, the paid listings come before even this One Box listing, so if you really feel like you need to be on top, you can buy your way. Your ad is pretty limited, but at least it's up there.
One more thing...will any pharma companies care about this change? They haven't cared about SEO before, as I've shown time and time again on my blog, so why start caring now?
Jonathan
Dose of Digital
It seems it's not all drugs yet as some oncology drugs - Tasigna, Oforta, Provenge - don't yet return the NIH site, but it looks like it's heading that way.
Ugh.
I really don't think the government controls google brand searches but I guess you never know.
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