In addition to providing SEM and SEO services to a broad range of clients, Catalyst has a specialty in pharmaceutical brands. Because this is such a competitive and highly regulated space, we are continually interested in how pharmaceutical companies in general are ranking on the Search Engine Results Pages of the major sites.
With more consumers going online for healthcare information, and millions of dollars in R&D at stake, it is critical that pharmaceutical companies take the necessary steps to ensure that health information seekers can find their brands online. We wanted to find out who was successful, and who was not.
Last year, we began a methodical analysis (see the process below) of how well the top five brands of the top eleven companies were ranking on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask. Some of these were Catalyst clients, and some were not, and the same is true today. In 2008 we continue to measure how well these pharma companies are doing in the race for the top positions.
Our results:
- The same four companies have kept their top scores since we began this analysis in January 2007: Novartis, Pfizer, GSK, and J&J.
- Novartis continues to lead the rankings with four out of five brands posting strong results on all search engines. Although it has the high score (1.72), there is room for improvement to reach the best-case scenario (7).
- Pfizer (1.02) is second with brands Lipitor, Lyrica and Viagra posting strong results.
- GSK (.89) is third with Advair and Avandia seeing good rankings.
- J&J (.62) has one strong brand, Topamax, that scores well to keep it in the top 4.
- The top three companies continue to break away from the pack with improved scores, while Johnson & Johnson (#4) dropped slightly.
- Merck wins most improved player award. After a year in 10th place, the company has jumped from #10 to #5 on the strength of one brand’s results.
- Sanofi Aventis (#7) had the exact same score as Q4 ‘07.
- BMS and AstraZeneca improved slightly.
- Eli-Lilly dropped slightly.
- Wyeth continues to trail at #11, with almost no web presence at all for its top five brands. Only one of its top 5 brands appeared on the results pages, and that was with a third page position.
Observations:
The top five companies are investing in organic search and clearly the investment is paying off. It is not by chance they are at the top. They have clearly made a commitment to “closing the loop’ by having a strong online presence that mirrors their offline efforts. This long term marketing strategy will continue to serve them well as they capitalize on consumer interest generated by DTC campaigns.
Methodology:
We developed the methodology below, using data gathered from the most recent publicly available financial information.
· Compiled data between April 1 - 30, 2008
· Determined the top 11 pharmaceutical companies based on revenue
· Examined the top 5 brands based on revenue
· Searched four keyphrases for each brand: “[indication]” and “[indication] treatment” and “[indication] medication” and “[indication] symptoms”
· Recorded each brand’s website rankings for each keyphrase on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask
· Assigned each ranking a point value based on Search Ranking Score: Top 5 Ranking = 15 points;?First Page Ranking = 10?points; Second Page Ranking = 3?points; Third Page Ranking = 1?point; Not Listed on First Three Pages = 0 points
· Identified each search engine’s market share based on comScore March 2008 U.S. Search Engine Rankings
· Calculated each company’s index score using Index = (Search Ranking Score * Search Engine Market Share)/11
· A perfect score = 7.0
