Observing trends in medical online marketing is always interesting. And it’s interesting to learn how people are looking for information online, including medical.
Google searches are by far the most popular – over 67% of online searches in December 2009 were through Google. And I understand why – when I need to look for something online, I just enter keywords into the search bar. If that doesn’t give me what I need, I just tweak the words to find more specific information.
Therefore, it’s not anything new to learn that organic search is a preferred means of locating information online…a method that continues its upward trajectory.
New data from comScore confirms this statement. Over 131 billion online searches occurred in December of ’09, a 46% increase over the same month the year before. In the U.S., searches grew by 22% despite the country’s recent economic troubles.
In terms of online searches, the U.S. is the world’s largest country in the world. Even though other countries saw much higher growth in 2009, the U.S. continues to be the top source online searches.
But where do these web surfers go to search for information online?
As stated above, Google remains the largest search engine in the world, experiencing 58% growth in 2009. But “core” search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing are not the only places people go to search for stuff online. Take for example eBay, who appears 5th on the list below with 2.1 billion searches. Facebook is another example, handling 1.6 billion searches in December ’09, a 43% increase over the same month a year before.
Looking at this data can only lead to one conclusion: optimizing medical websites for the search engines is an increasingly important means of drawing visitors to your website. Without good search engine optimization practices, potential patients searching for the services you offer will never know about you.