2012 Resolutions for Your Practice
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The new year is officially here and with it come plenty of predictions & resolutions. We’ve become a big fan over the years of Dr. Larry Emmott and his blog on technology and we love his delightfully witty post on what (not) to predict for 2012. Having spent the past few years as change-agents in the healthcare space, we recognize these anti-predictions are all too often true. Still, our tireless optimism and careful insight recognizes that more doctors do see the light every year when it comes to using the web to grow their practices. So, here are 5 simple resolutions to get your practice on track for a great 2012…
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Yelp Files for IPO to Raise $100M
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They day we’ve been telling you about just became reality. Doctor review site Yelp has officially filed to go public with their IPO. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to those of you reading the DoctorBlog this past year, as we’ve mentioned the likelihood of Yelp going public sometime in 2012. Now, with the class-action lawsuits behind them, they’ve stated they plan to use the IPO to raise over $100M…but, in all likelihood, may end up raising even more.
Google+ Page +Features
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We’ve been getting a lot of questions from doctors this week about the new Google+ Pages. Many of you are still wondering what the heck a Google+ Page is and what it will do for your practice. Fair question. Let’s dig a bit deeper into a couple features of a Google+ Page to understand how it can help your practice…
Dentist Review Site Yelp Gets $100M Investment
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Dentist review site Yelp was in the news again this past week with the announcement that they’ve secured up to $100 million in additional funding from humanitarian-slash-rockstar Bono’s private equity firm, Elevation Partners. While it doesn’t give them quite the weight that a $550 million buyout from Google would have, it does ensure that they’ll continue to grow. And, continue to grow is exactly what they have planned for 2010.
After the announcement of Elevation’s investment, Yelp’s CEO announced that “the funds are going to be put to use in expansion,” and that “you’re going to see Yelp in more cities” over the next year. So, if you haven’t had to deal with Yelp in your city yet, you soon will.
For those of you who have already dealt with the sales calls offering to help you “manage your reviews” only when you advertise with Yelp, get ready for more of them. Currently, the sales calls that dental practices are getting from Yelp are the work of around 150 salespeople. They also plan to more than double the size of their sales team to around 350. This means that the aggressive sales tactics some dentists have already experienced are also about to become more widespread.
What do you need to do before Yelp expands into your neighborhood? Take control of your own name online before Yelp does! Ensure the top results on Google lead to a page that you control – not a Yelp page with unverified content that’s using your name to advertise for other dentists in your area. Then, make sure your page has relevant, educational content and reviews from verified patients. When you ensure your patients have an authentic, transparent view of your practice they’ll keep coming back and continue to recommend you to their friends & colleagues.
Are Competitors Using Your Name To Advertise Online?
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The author is not an attorney and nothing here is to be construed as legal advice
If you type your name into Google these days, the odds are that you’ll find a number of search results that lead to profile pages on sites that you’ve never heard of before. (Go ahead – Google your name and see for yourself!) This is because the multitudes of review sites that exist on the web have created pages under your name with your publicly available information (think phone books, census data, etc.). This, in and of itself isn’t illegal, since all they’re doing is reposting public, non-copyrighted information.
It begins to get a bit more complicated when these sites begin using the profile they’ve established under your name to advertise for other dentists. Many review sites have begun “name-squatting” on dentists’ names in order to do just this. Here’s how it works…
A patient will search for “John Smith DDS” in order to find Dr. Smith’s phone number to make an appointment. The first search result may be a review site stating it has Dr. John Smith’s contact info. The patient then clicks through to the page, and finds a page with Dr. Smith’s info, and advertisements for Dr. Joe Johnson – Dr. John Smith’s competitor across the street.
Some sites are taking it one step further and actively advertising on Google with paid advertising for dentists’ names – right in the search results. It gets even worse when the advertisement that appears for a search of “John Smith DDS” contains “Avoid These Dentists” wording like the following example:
The first wave of lawsuits against Google for allowing this practice have all dealt with trademark infringement, and haven’t established any clear precedent as to the legality of this practice. Plus, you have to consider that just because it’s your name, doesn’t mean that it’s a licensed trademark. The real question seems to be whether this practice abides by the standards of fair business practice, and whether the website involved in this practice is acting as a publisher or a host.
The California Unfair Business Practices Act maintains that businesses that practice deceptive or misleading advertising may be subject to civil lawsuit, including penalties. By deliberately introducing confusion into the marketplace, there are some who argue this practice violates this section of California’s Business and Professions Code.
The next question is “who’s responsible?” If the website participating in this practice is doing so by injecting editorial commentary about you, then it’s acting as a publisher and may be held accountable for their actions. If the website is merely hosting these dubious advertisements for a third-party, then the onus for this practice could be passed along to the third-party.
Whichever way you look at it, the emergence of online advertising has opened up a whole new universe of legal questions. And, it will certainly be interesting to see what precedents the courts set in the following year.
Dentists are Searched by Name on Google Every Month
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Whether it is a result of already extant marketing, word of mouth, current patients looking for you or finding your name in a listing of dentists by insurance, we are finding that dentists are searched by name quite a lot per month.
Our internal records show over a test of 100 dentists that the range of searches varies anywhere from 40 to 200 times per month. This data is gotten from monitoring the various Google tools for analysing Google advertising.
This makes what is shown on the search for your name very important.
It is of course essential that your website be found and after that you will find review and directory sites. This is important territory to control, this is your online reputation.
Feel free to email us should you have concerns as to what to do if the search on your name is not to your liking.
How “Name Squatters” Take Advantage of Dentists in Private Practice
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If any dentist does a search in Google for their name and city, they’ll hopefully find their own website as the #1 search result. Looking below that result one may find a collection of review sites and online directories. Maybe even some ads from competitors on the right hand side.
These search results did not get there by accident – they are designed by these sites to be found on searches for your name. Such website owners that purposefully advertise under your name are increasingly referred to as “Name Squatters.” These sites know that doctors and dentists will be searched by name, and up to 66% of the traffic on these searches for your name may become diverted to these squatter sites.
So while brands like Procter & Gamble enjoy trademark & copywrite protections on the Web, we dentists – for whom our name IS our brand – get little to none. In fact, the more our names get “Googled” the more our names are worth to our competitors who advertise on those searches. So we do all the hard work to build word-of-mouth and then the squatters come in at the tail-end to try and divert patients attention.
Solution: Creating public “presence pages” and other social media profiles can eventually (in 5 to 9 months) populate the first page of Google results – with multiple listings on the first page. That means you may want to think about creating a blog, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. The more you control the first page of Google the better you can create & manage “mind-share” amongst your patients – especially those 35 and younger.
While you won’t be able to totally eliminate “Name Squatters” or misleading negative reviews, you can battle for eyeballs and opinions by being proactive. Otherwise, this trend is not going away anytime soon. In fact, reviews for dentists and other private practices are the fastest growing piece of the onine reviews business (anyone notice all the Angie’s List commercials lately?)
