About /
By Dave Marston, SEO Manager at Rosetta
If you’ve entered a medical-related search query in Google during the past 2 years, chances are you’ve seen Google’s Health OneBox or Medication OneBox at the top of your organic search results. Google has said their main goal with Health OneBox and Medication OneBox is to provide search users with accurate healthcare information as quickly as possible and that their motives are not monetary based. However some have questioned Google’s true motives since they’re manipulating their own organic or “free” search listings with unoriginal content that can be found elsewhere on the web.
Above is an example of Google’s Health OneBox listing for the term epilepsy. By definition, Health OneBox is a default listing that Google places at the top of organic search results for medical condition “head terms” such as diabetes, epilepsy and gout. Google began displaying their Health OneBox in August 2009. When the search query includes other words in addition to the head term such as epilepsy symptoms, the Health OneBox goes away. It only appears for the main head terms.
In this instance, Google is displaying a brief definition of epilepsy. The definition itself comes from the .gov National Institutes of Health (NIH) website. There are also site links pointing to pages on NIH that offer more details about the disease. This default listing seems harmless enough and the search user is able to gain general knowledge about epilepsy without having to leave Google.
However, as we inspect other search results on the page, we can see Google’s Health OneBox is pushing down the #1 organic listing for Epilepsy.com into the #2 spot. Thus the presence of the default Health OneBox is effectively removing Epilepsy.com’s top share-of-voice for the term epilepsy.
So what main effect is Health OneBox having here? Although they’ve successfully secured the #1 organic position for epilepsy, Epilepsy.com feels the need to bid on the keyword epilepsy in order to maintain a strong share-of-voice for the term. If Google was not displaying their default Health OneBox listing for epilepsy, Epilepsy.com might not be paying Google to send targeted traffic to their site through their paid ads – thinking they could perhaps attract the same amount of traffic from a #1 organic listing. Also if a search user is just looking for a quick definition of epilepsy, the presence of Health OneBox could eliminate the need for them to click on a result altogether. Thus it may prevent clicks on both organic and pay-per-click listings in some cases.
Now let’s take a look at Google’s Medication OneBox. This example shows a default Medication OneBox listing for the drug Tamiflu, often used to treat and prevent influenza. Medication OneBox is a default listing that Google places at the top of organic search results for all prescription drugs and generic drug names. Google first launched their Medication OneBox in June 2010.
Similar to Health OneBox listings, Google is displaying a concise definition of Tamiflu. The definition is taken from the .gov National Institutes of Health website. And again, we can follow site links pointing to pages on NIH that give more details about the drug, such as potential side effects. As with an unbranded Health OneBox listing, the search user can learn general information about Tamiflu and the condition it treats without having to leave the SERP (search engine results page).
But when we view the remaining search results for Tamiflu, we see Google’s Medication OneBox is pushing down the #1 listing for the branded website Tamiflu.com to the #2 organic listing, which is effectively taking away Tamiflu.com’s top share-of-voice for the term Tamiflu.
One reason why a pharma brand manager might elect to bid on their brand name would be to outbid other websites that are bidding on their drug name. In fact, we can see in the above example, Facesofinfluenza.com is also bidding on the term Tamiflu. But just like the Health OneBox example with Epilepsy.com, it’s possible Medication OneBox is giving pharma brand managers another reason to consider running paid search ads for their own brand name in order to maintain top share-of-voice in Google’s SERPs. If Google was not displaying their default NIH listing for Tamiflu, the owners of Tamiflu.com might feel less inclined to pay Google for clicks since they would already have the #1 organic position for their brand name.
Past studies have shown that having that “one-two combination” of the #1 paid and #1 organic listings for a keyword can provide an increase in click-throughs and conversions. Hence this is another logical reason why a pharma brand manager might choose to bid on their brand. But we can see the presence of OneBox actually prevents Tamiflu.com from experiencing that associated lift in performance since their organic result is no longer in the #1 position. So even though the owners of Tamiflu.com are willing to bid on their brand name, they cannot reap the perceived benefits of having two #1 search listings.
Although Google claims their rationale for displaying default NIH listings in organic search results is to provide search users with quick and accurate healthcare information, it appears they’re contradicting themselves by displaying an unbranded default listing as the first organic result whenever a user searches for a prescription drug name. Google always says displaying the most relevant results is of utmost importance to them. But we can see the relevance is less than ideal in the above example since Tamiflu.com does not appear as the first organic search result for the brand keyword Tamiflu.
As seen with these examples of Health OneBox and Medication OneBox, Google has shown a willingness to change the game somewhat. Search marketers must work to adapt in order to maximize their pharma clients’ visibility in Google.
Incidentally, Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo search engines have followed suit and added their own default health listings to the top of their organic search results when search users enter medical-related head terms such as diabetes, epilepsy or gout. The Bing Health listings consist of copy that resides on MayoClinic.com. Yahoo displays default listings with links that point to their own Yahoo Health website.