You all know the stats about how many consumers (and physicians) go to the Web first for healthcare info, and the percentage is growing every day. Most often, searchers start with a simple term like “arthritis treatment” and proceed from there.
Engaging these motivated searchers at the top of the funnel is crucial for long-term brand recognition and, ultimately, revenue.
We wanted to find out who was successful, and who was not.
We’ve just completed our analysis of how well the top eleven pharmaceutical companies ranked in Q2 2008 on the Search Engine Results Pages of the major sites.
We looked at the top five brands of each company (based on revenue) and searched for four keyphrases for each brand: “[indication]” and “[indication] treatment” and “[indication] medication” and “[indication] symptoms.”
Then we recorded each brand’s website rankings for each keyphrase on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask. (You can see the complete process below). This isn’t a popularity contest. Our results don’t reflect how many visitors each brand attracts, but what position these brands appear in when a searcher specifically looks for their indication.
Our results show that the top ranked companies are reaping the rewards of their investment in organic search. They’ve recognized the value for these brands of having a vital, consistent Web presence that reinforces their significant offline marketing.
Our results:
- The same three companies have kept their top scores since we began this analysis in January 2007: Novartis, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline. But this quarter, for the first time, JNJ dropped out of the top four, swapping places with Roche at #6.
- 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 (1.39) there is room for improvement to reach the best-case scenario (7).
- Pfizer (.93) is second with brands Lipitor, Lyrica and Viagra posting strong results.
- GSK (.72) is third with Advair, Avandia and Valtrex seeing good rankings.
- Roche (.58) has one strong brand, Rituxan, that scores well to bump it into the top 4.
- Merck (.36) maintains its status at #5 with one brand’s results.
- J&J (.32) has slipped to #6 with Topamax’s rankings.
- AstraZeneca (.22) has jumped from #10 and #7 this quarter and is tied with Bristol-Myers.
- Sanofi Aventis (.17) and Eli-Lilly (.09) both dropped slightly to places #9 and #10.
- Wyeth (.02) 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.
Methodology:
We developed the methodology below, using data gathered from the most recent publicly available financial information.
- Compiled data between July 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 June 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
