This post is unrelated to Healthcare marketing, but I thought I’d voice my sadness in hearing of the news late yesterday that the late, great slapstick actor Leslie Nielsen passed away Sunday.  After just watching Naked Gun over the Thanksgiving weekend and being reminded of how many laughs and quotes he gave us that still regularly find their way into daily conversations and jokes, my hat’s off…for my friends and I will Shirley miss him, but he will be remembered always thru his classic comedies.

How he kept a straight face throughout the scenes is beyond me.

Favorite Nielsen quotes/scenes:

“Doing nothing is very hard to do…you never know when you’re finished.”

The Naked Gun 2-1/2:

Jane: Yeah, you know, a white guy. A mustache. About six-foot-three.
Frank: Awfully big mustache.

Airplane still ranks as one of my all time favorites…and probably one I have most quoted.

“How soon can you land?” I can’t tell.” “You can tell me, I’m a doctor”

Dr. Rumack: You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.
Elaine Dickinson: A hospital–what is it?
Dr. Rumack: It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.

and of course the classic:

Dr. Rumack: Can you fly this plane, and land it?
Ted Striker: Surely you can’t be serious.
Rumack: I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley!

Headline credit goes to Russell Brand’s tweet

It’s likely that many of you have noticed by now that Google has changed the way they display search results for many of your searches.  What you may not have realized is that the reason behind it is that Google recently introduced “Place Search”, a change to the way they display search results that have a local business search element (for example, when using a city modifier)

Google used to display local search results like this, with their map at the top and 7 local business website links displayed just to the right of the map, typically displayed with the phone number.

Those listings will now look like this new search results layout.

When does this type of listing show up?  According to Google, “when we predict you’re looking for local information.”  This can be as obvious as the use of a keyword modifier like a city name, or more complex based on a number of factors in their algorithm.

According to Google’s announcement for Place Search, the resulting output is “a new kind of local search result that organizes the world’s information around places.”  Perhaps more important to Healthcare Marketers, is that it marks a significant change in the real estate taken up by local listings, the number of listings displayed, and how much lower their traditional organic search results display.  Also notable, is the listing of links to review sites like Yelp and citysearch just under the result next to the thumbnail.

This should create a major impact for local healthcare searches…the local listings become far more prominent (and take up the entire space above the fold now) so if you weren’t ranking for local searches for your keywords, you could see a big drop in website traffic.  And since local business listings (maps) are different than google’s organic listings, a “Places” SEO strategy to rank for these lisings becomes even more important.

Google’s announcement should also make the importance of online reputation management more evident and how having a strategy for physician review sites like Yelp and HealthGrades is critical.  It also serves as a foreshadowing of sorts of their upcoming local search advertising plan.  (Check back soon for an upcoming post about their new program means for local healthcare internet advertising)

Google says they are “connecting hundreds of millions of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations,” so if you still don’t think a medical website is important to your practice or organization, think about how consumers are finding information on local practitioners and comparing the competition.  If you don’t have a web presence yet, you may never even get the opportunity to be considered.  Check back soon to read our future posts for tips on online reputation management, local search ranking strategy, and review sites.

If you don’t have a website yet, or have a solid strategy for local search or physician review sites, please don’t hesitate to call us at 813-658-8760 to discuss how we can use our years of internet and healthcare marketing experience to help you with your medical website design, or to help create a comprehensive online strategy.