The placement of the related disease searches on the page is prominent 

In February Google announced a new enhancement to their search results for health symptoms. We have known for a long time that Dr. Google is one of the first places people go to investigate whether a symptom is worth a trip to the doctor to investigate or not. This change in how the results are displayed tries to use the data from the National Institutes of Health, Wikipedia, and others, to determine the most common diagnoses that are associated with their symptom.

“Our data shows that a search for symptoms is often followed by a search for a related condition. To make the process easier, now when you search for a symptom or set of symptoms, you’ll often see a list of possibly related health conditions that you can use to refine your search,” writes Roni Zeiger, MD, Google’s Chief Health Strategist, on their blog.

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Recently there has also been an integration of Google+ content into search engine results pages 

Google has been an important part of the health research process for patients and healthcare providers for many years. This year Google is shaking things up with a list of new products and innovations that will affect both the paid and organic search strategies of pharmaceutical companies.

Google+
Google started allowing businesses to create Google+ pages/profiles and visitors to opt into specific “circles” in order to receive specific posts and updates. An example might be using circles to customize messages for patients, healthcare providers and caregivers. The Google+ platform could integrate well with a segmented marketing strategy, and Google+ now has a network of 100 million users worldwide.

However, one reason for pharma to wait to create Google+ pages is because the commenting capability cannot be suppressed or controlled the way it can be on YouTube. Note that just like Facebook (850 million users), a Google+ page requires resources to add content, monitor comments and interact with users. Roche is the only biopharmaceutical company we have seen who has taken advantage of Google+ with placeholder company and career pages.

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double the number of MDs used Google (87%) for professional research online as the next most-used search options 

Two studies were recently released regarding the online search habits of physicians. The first, Kantar Media’s Sources & Interactions, found that double the number of MDs used Google (87%) for professional research online as the next most-used search options (WebMD and PubMed, each at 43%). Google was one of six consumer search engines pulling significant usage; each was used by an average of 23% of physicians. That’s the same percentage that used each of the six medical sites on average, the study revealed. See the details on the chart at the bottom of the post.

Age matters
Kantar discovered wide variations in reported usage based on specialty, age, and other demographic factors. Google and Yahoo! were consistent performers across most groups, generally varying only within a two or three point range of average, while other sites showed wide variance. For example, PubMed was used by only 29% of family medicine doctors but 77% of infectious disease specialists. Older users preferred PubMed and Google Scholar, while younger users more frequently used general search engines Yahoo! and Bing, as well as WebMD and MDLinx. Interestingly, the study found that almost three times as many physicians who don’t see sales reps use UpToDate, compared with those who meet with reps.

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We have yet to see how much data will be lost; Google suggests it should be a minority 

This week Google announced that it is making a change to how Google Analytics (GA) reports keyword level data. Google announced this as a change intended to protect the privacy of the user data of people who are logged into their tools while searching.

Basically, Google explains the change as separating the keyword level data from searches into two groups: one for those who are not signed into Google’s universal login for all its products and one for those who are logged in. Google will remove/suppress/protect the keyword level data from the search results pages for those people who are logged in, and those keywords will be listed within the organic search reporting of GA as “not set” or “not provided.” Everything else from searchers who are not logged in will still be reported, as will all data from paid search campaigns.

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this may increase or decrease the impressions of your Paid Search ads and the resulting the Click-Through-Rate 

On September 8, Google Instant was launched, showing search results as the user types the query. You don’t have to finish typing or hit enter to see results. In fact, after typing one letter, results appear. This predictive search tries to anticipate what users are looking for and save time.

If you haven’t already tried it, go to Google.com to see how it works (it hasn’t been rolled out to the Google search boxes in toolbars). You can turn off Instant search – which I did after a few days since I found it to be distracting. Some industry pundits are predicting that this is the future of search and in a few years we won’t remember searching any other way. However, others are skeptical. It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Impact on Paid Search
It’s interesting to start to type in a search query and as you continue, see the different Paid Search ads appear. According to Google, a Paid Search ad impression is counted in three different ways:

• Any click on the page: If a user begins typing, then clicks anywhere on the page (whether that’s for an ad, a spell check or related search), an impression is counted.
• Search selection: If a user clicks the search button or presses enter or selects one of the predicted queries, an impression is counted.
• Three-seconds: If a user stops typing and does nothing for three seconds, an impression is counted.

Depending on how your campaign is set up, this may increase or decrease the impressions of your Paid Search ads and the resulting the Click-Through-Rate (CTR).
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New research shows that patients turn to search engines for health and medication information, and no longer just rely on physicians.

About.com surveyed 1,321 people via their site and the chart below shows the actions taken right after diagnosis. Compared to the survey last year, the numbers of patients who use a search engine to research the prescribed drug before getting it filled has risen from 12% to 30%.

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Metadata, which is invisible to anyone viewing a website in a browser, is part of the underlying page code. Search engines use this metadata: they pull the page title tag and description and display them on their results page. Anyone can view the site’s metadata by right clicking on a page. If you choose “view page source” from the menu that appears, you will see the code for the page, including the meta title and description.

Here’s an example of the metadata that has been written into the code for the homepage of Baxter’s ThereForYou.com:

Here is how it looks when Google pulls the metadata to display the title and the description in their organic search results:

Why Should Pharma Care?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent a letter to Novartis dated July 29, 2010, regarding a Facebook Share widget on their brand website, Tasigna.com. This widget pulled the content from the metadata. The FDA letter noted that this content did not contain fair balance.
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I'd prefer Google to be like Switzerland. 

When you search a popular drug on Google the first result is now from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Google launched this new feature on June 21, 2010.

If you aren’t familiar with search results, at the very top and side are Paid Search ads (Pay Per Click). Below and in the middle are the natural search engine results where Google has started inserting the NIH in the first slot.

Now when you search the generic or brand name of a popular prescription or over the counter medication you get a pill icon and a box that provides a brief description and links to side effects, instructions, etc. The links all take you to the NIH site where the information appears to be licensed from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

Here is what you’ll see if you search Advil.

Why It Matters
When I raised this topic the other night during the pharma social media and marketing tweetchat (#SocPharm), people generally thought it was a good idea. They liked the fact that the top result was a credible, trusted source that would steer searchers in the right direction. I disagreed because I don’t like to see Google making editorial decisions and I’d prefer Google to be like Switzerland.
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This data reinforces the importance of having a search strategy for your web properties 

Dr. Google is still diagnosing Americans. A recent survey found 22% consider Google searches “influential” in seeking health info. While doctors came in first (44%), other healthcare professionals, such as nurses and pharmacists, trailed the search engine. Here are the details.

Percentage of respondents ranking the following sources as the most influential source the last time they sought health information

Source: Capstrat-Public Policy Poll, April 2010

The Impact for Pharma
This data reinforces the importance of having a search strategy for your web properties. Both organic and paid search strategies are essential to get your information in front of the appropriate people.

But Who Do You Trust Online?
Health advocacy groups emerged as a trusted source of online health information: 71% found web content of such groups “somewhat reliable” or “extremely reliable,” much higher than the 59% who felt that way about organic Google searches.

While the April 2010 research conducted by Capstrat and Public Policy Polling surveyed only 678 Americans, these results were consistent with recent research conducted by Epsilon.

What do you think about this survey?

This post was contributed by Eileen O’Brien, Director of Search & Innovation for Siren Interactive. You can connect with her on Twitter at @eileenobrien.

(Image courtesy of Mark Knol via Flickr)

But with the rise of Web 2.0, social media sites present a valuable opportunity that goes beyond traditional search. 

Soyoon Bolton, Content Strategist at Siren Interactive, contributes this post:

Recently, I posted an update on my Facebook profile asking my fellow Facebook friends for book recommendations instead of doing a general Google search for recent book reviews. Likewise, I notice people are more frequently searching for information and recommendations from others on social media sites — from searching LinkedIn for job opportunities to searching Facebook for apartments or subletters.

Not only is social media a great communications tool, but its real-time search capabilities also help people find exactly what they’re looking for. In fact, some social media sites are starting to surpass traditional search engines for specific information — more people are going directly to YouTube to find a particular video than searching for it on Yahoo. Many social media sites are also intertwined with each other, making search more productive and further increasing user engagement. For instance, you can post a message, or “tweet”, on Twitter, which in turn can feed automatically into a Facebook status. Easily, you can receive replies from both channels. As more people connect with each other via social media, these networks are proving to be extremely efficient in helping people obtain the information they seek.

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