Most Doctors Ignore Paid Search to Access Health Content: comScore
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title=Physicians Prefer Nonreferred Visits}
Nonreferred
visits, or direct navigation, in which searchers manually enter a URL or access
sites from bookmarks, are how physicians find a majority of sites, according to
comScore.
"Physicians
don't click on paid search," Mangano said. "If they're using search,
they're going to click on nonreferred [links]."
Categories
of sites physicians visited the most include Pharmacy Services at 73 percent,
Pharma Support at 67 percent and Clinic Sites at 59 percent.
In
contrast, paid search of pharmaceutical sites accounted for only 7 percent of
doctors' Web visits in comScore's research.
Physicians'
visits to government health sites and social media sites generated 100 percent
natural search results. Meanwhile, 80 percent of visits to pharmaceutical sites
were natural search compared with 20 percent paid.
Of
physicians' natural search activity, 71 percent was geared toward locating
physicians and 59 percent involved searching for general health content, like
that of WebMD
and Everyday Health. Meanwhile, 45 percent of doctors' Web visits led to
government health sites such as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention) or National Institutes of Health.
To
compile the report on physicians' search habits, which comScore released as
part of its comScore/ImpactRx Physician Behavioral Measurement initiative,
comScore gathered search data from about 1,000 physicians.
ImpactRx tracks and evaluates how
pharmaceutical promotional activities may lead to physician prescribing
behavior.
When
companies are forming their SEO plans for health care sites, they want to keep
in mind that doctors prefer natural search, Mangano suggested.
"They're
going to be more receptive to results coming off of organic search, so
definitely don't overlook search engine optimization," he advised.
"That should be as important, if not more so, than a paid search strategy."
