Web Reviews

Search Engine Woes

Indianapolis, IN - September 18, 2006

“Search engine optimization is not rocket science. It's truly not that difficult to do, but to do it well takes time, effort, and perserverance.”

– Jim Cota

I had the pleasure of being a general session speaker for the two regional tech conferences the Indiana Medical Group Management Association held this month. The title of my presentation was "Five Internet Myths and One Abiding Truth," and I used my time to focus on some common misconceptions regarding the internet. My intention was to highlight these misconceptions, present the truth of the matter, and clairfy the ways that you can put it to use to help drive your business success. (The application of this material is slightly different for medical practices than it is for general business, but if you're interested in reading a white paper based on the presentation, send me a request via email and I'll get one to you.)

One of the issues I covered in my time with the group was search engine optimization. Specifically, we talked about why it was so important for the success of any internet venture and how challenging it can be to do well. During this point in the presentation, a participant raised his hand and asked, "Does this really apply to us? I mean, if I want to find an OB in Ft. Wayne, can't I just go to Google and type in 'OB/GYN and Ft. Wayne Indiana' and get a list of all of them?" That seems like a perfectly logical question, and the answer seems pretty obvious, too. I wish I'd had an internet connection in the conference center so I could have done the search right then. Because he was helping to make my point.

First of all, search engine optimization is not rocket science. It's truly not that difficult to do, but to do it well takes time, effort, and perserverance. And, in some ways, it requires you to think like a computer. I think we could all agree that the results he expected to get from his search should be the results he got. But they aren't.

In fact, I found that it was impossible to find a list of all OB/GYN's in Ft. Wayne, regardless of the search terms I entered. And I found that the search returned drastically different results based on how I formatted my search terms. For instance, I used "Ft. Wayne, Indiana" in all searches and changed how I entered the OB/GYN designation. If I enter just "OB", I get 780,000 results, with a broadcasting company listed number two. (The first result on this page looks promising, but it requires that you pay for the report to see the list.)

If I change the term to "OB-GYN", I get 169,000 results, including Women's Health Advantage in the number one spot, which is a perfect match for my search, but only lists the doctors at that clinic. Changing the format to "OB/GYN" yielded a similar but different list of results, only finding 119,000 results and providing a fairly significant re-ordering of the list. It's worth noting that none of the results on the first several pages provided a complete list of OB/GYN's in Ft. Wayne.

Essentially, making very minor formatting changes to the search term returned significantly different results. And this was for a search that was extremely straight-forward. Imagine, instead, that you're searching for a solution to a problem that's either difficult to pare down to a few terms or hard to describe in general. Results for these indistinct searches can be very frustrating, and it could be that your potential prospects are trying to find you using less-than-perfect search terms.

So while the logic of his question is sound, the practical application doesn't support it. Search engines think like machines, not like people (at least, not yet.) He expected to easily find a list of all OB/GYN's in Ft. Wayne, and I found that it wasn't only difficult, it may be impossible. If you're going to achieve the results you want, and make your site easy for your prospects to find, you need to ensure that your site content and programming is created in a way to merge the two schools of thought. In essence, you need to present your information so a machine can translate it into human terms. And, as we all know, humans can be quite unpredictable.