Medication Search Implications Followup

Last week, I wrote a post discussing the launch of Google Medication search - a partnership between Google and NIH to display government-hosted content as the forced first result for most brand drugs. I find it a bit odd that this forced result does not apply to all brands at this point, but perhaps that is due to the fact that it hasn’t propogated all the way down to smaller drugs? I do know that for the the big-name, high profile drugs have the NIH result placed above all others, forcing the official product site to be the #2 result. As I had indicated in my original post, one of my fears was that this would have a direct impact on natural search traffic to brand.com sites.

This discussion has been picked up quite a bit in the cyber world by folks interested in pharma marketing. Wend Blackburn from Intouch Solutions’ official ePharmaRX wrote a post about this as well, addressing some of the unspoken concerns that I did not include in my post. This topic was also mentioned over at Reason.com by Ronald Bailey (using direct quotes from my post and also from Greg Sterling, a well-known search marketing expert). John Mack also wrote about this new enhancement at Google, although he has a more positive view of the enhancement than I myself do.

In any event, the “enhancement” by Google to display NIH results above even the official brand.com site is a clear manual manipulation of search results, which is most definitely blurring the lines between natural and paid (as Wendy suggests in her post). Other points made are that, when you click on the new sponsored links from the NIH, in many cases you will find information that is outdated, inaccurate or not fairly represented. Why is it that the government which provides restriction to pharmaceutical marketing efforts can ignore those same restrictions? Is information from 2005 or 2007 on a government agency website really more applicable and valid than updated information on a brand.com site? I seriously doubt it.

I stand firm that I don’t believe that these results are necessarily in the best interest of consumers. It certainly isn’t in the best interest of pharma companies and marketers. It does benefit big government and big Google, though. Google stands to potentially increase paid search revenues as pharmaceutical marketers will look to supplement the lost traffic with new traffic sources. Google and everyone else knows that pharma prefers paid search over natural search in general – primarily because it is guaranteed and more easily managed, in my opinion. This means that pharma SEM could see an increased budget trend with Google Medication Search in place. Government, on the other side of this partnerhsip, will have the ability to seed their content and information through one of the most powerful sources of information gathering by consumers.

Is it censorship? Maybe. Is it a Google “hand job” to the government? I say yes. I personally think it is too much government influence on Google search (i.e., a bit “Google China”).

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.