Doctors tend to be oblivious to their Google reputation – that is, what comes up when you enter your name into Google.
That’s too bad, since Google is the primary way patients search for health information, not to mention employers and hospitals. If your name is associated with poor user reviews from doctor rating sites, malpractice suits, or negative press, then it’s time to do something about it.
The Independent Urologist shares some tips to help with your search engine reputation. There are paid services for this, as it’s essentially employing basic search engine optimization techniques for your name.
If you have the time and can spare the effort, it’s worth doing yourself.
Related posts:
- Cleaning up your online reputation
- Google yourself: Tips for your search engine reputation
- How to minimize getting stiffed from patients
- Are you Googleable?
- What kind of patient no-shows?
- Defending your online reputation
- Patients are striking back at doctors via Google
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 10 comments }
Be careful when trying to sanitize your reputation on the internet. While some providers will, in fact, remove content, in general the best way to spread bad news is to threaten a lawsuit: read the Streisand Effect article on wikipedia.
I’d argue that the best presence a doctor can have is a simple web page tweaked to be at the top of the search. The people who currently use ratings sites are generally vitriolic. I avoid them when looking for a doctor, and imagine many people do the same. If you have a few bad reviews, start asking your patients to evaluate you there and they’ll likely even out.
I don’t think you need to start blogging and commenting all over the web unless you’re trying to do some serious damage control or have a genuine interest in being a blogosphere player.
At this point, patients choose far more on insurance accepted, location, and doctor referral than search results. Tweaking your search results is very modern of you, but I don’t think it’s a major player yet.
(disclosure: I’m just under the age of 30. That makes me your up-and-coming target)
If you are picking a doctor based on a review by an anonymous person for which you know nothing of their character, then you have serious flaws in your decision making capability.
“If you are picking a doctor based on a review by an anonymous person for which you know nothing of their character, then you have serious flaws in your decision making capability.”
I wouldn’t use it as the sole determinant, but I would look to see if there is a trend, and look at the things people either liked or didn’t like, and if those things are important to me, I will take that into consideration.
why do you assume that any criticism of a doctor is invalid? Aren’t there some bad doctors out there that deserve to be “outed”?
I don’t think you can make a meaningful judgment based on a “trend” on some online anonymous website. There seem to be several different ones and none seem to be highly trafficked. It seems to be a selection bias for disgruntled, chronically-angry people who preferentially spend lots of time online. The opinions of those sorts of people hardly deserve special consideration. Even if two or three people say negative things, how large a sample from a busy practice can that represent? Not much really. The vast majority of patients depend on referral recommendation, insurance carrier affiliation and local availability. “Online reputation” figures less importantly than recommendation of friends and things like convenient parking, probably far less importantly.
Medicine is largely a local profession. Most of the www could care less.
And the more I see of doctors websites, the more convinced I am that simple is better. The webpage should be a portal to the practice, specifically to the appointment schedule. Turning it into a branch office of the National Library of Medicine is missing the point.
Just out of curiosity, from the doctor point of view, what would you suggest that patients use as the best criteria for determining whether a doctor is the best choice?
I wouldn’t pay much attention to on-line rants either, but it seems like about all you can do is check Department of Professional Regulation sites to make sure there’s been no disciplinary action. That isn’t much to go on.
Other doctors certainly will not (and in most cases probably should not) discuss their personal assesments of their colleagues. Nor can you get testimonials from former patients due to privacy concerns.
But what if 2 doctors have the same name? It is possible with common names…
Happy Hospitalist dismisses doctor reviews by anonymous people. Would it have made a difference if it had been signed Happy Patient?
Oh, the irony…
laur said: “But what if 2 doctors have the same name? It is possible with common names…”
The doctor rating sites list the specialty and city next to the name.
anon 538 hit the nail on the head.
happy patient, a good reivew or a bad review is meaningless when the numbers are so small. I’ve looked at doctor reviews. A sample size of 2,3 10 people is meaningless. If you get 100’s of people commenting on a single doctor on a review site, then power to separate chance anger or sheer delightment increases significantly and it may have some meaning. The numbers I see out there are simply not sufficient for any single doc to warrant making any decisions on.
Comments on this entry are closed.