Navigating the healthcare market

In today's increasingly digital landscape, consumers’ search behaviors largely influence the journey to care. This is particularly true when it comes to location-based queries. Healthcare organizations need to refine and optimize their online presence to expand their reach and effectively communicate what they offer to the communities they serve.

Inside the algorithm: How Google delivers search results

Google is much more than a juggernaut of the tech world. It fundamentally revolutionized consumer behavior and how people find and interact with companies and brands. The Google name has become synonymous with search. And healthcare’s no different: 88% of consumers start looking for providers on Google.

Optimizing your online presence for search engines increases the chances prospective patients will find you when they need care. Google search relies on several factors, which are constantly being updated, starting with location—even if no location is specified in the query. For instance, a search for "OB-GYNs" will prioritize nearby options based on various data sources, including the facility’s location and the searcher’s IP address.

Relevance and prominence are also key. Relevance represents how well a local business profile aligns with the user’s search intent, while prominence reflects the business’s overall online reputation, giving more well-established institutions a boost in search results. 

A localized approach is essential for uncovering opportunities in secondary markets and rural areas, where limited access to care often requires patients to travel longer distances. While larger healthcare organizations may have multiple locations across a state or region, Google typically prioritizes and displays the nearest options. This means not all locations will appear in search results. Organizations can’t rely solely on their main brand listings. Smaller or more remote locations must also have strong, optimized listings to ensure visibility and accessibility.

Think beyond Google: Managing your web-wide listings

While Google is a great place to start, the search engine isn’t consumers’ be-all and end-all for research. Review sites like Healthgrades, content sites like WebMD, health system websites, insurance websites, and social media are widely used by patients when looking for or researching a new provider. Ensuring your information is accurate across all channels is vital to patient acquisition. Because you never know where someone might find you. 

One reason? Local SEO is evolving into "Search Everywhere Optimization" as consumers increasingly turn to AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and Bing CoPilot for their search needs. To stay competitive, businesses must look beyond Google and optimize for key industry-specific sites. In healthcare, sites like Healthgrades, WebMD, Vitals, Healthline, and Sharecare have become vital places to build a brand presence. The old approach of relying on aggregators is now outdated, as these sites rank aggregators (e.g., Foursquare, YP.com, MerchantCircle) low, and AI tools can even exclude them from results. To succeed, businesses need to combine a “search everywhere” strategy with a "transparency everywhere" strategy, especially in review publishing—an area where tools like Yext fall short.

As a response to this change in consumer behavior, Google has developed the generative AI-enabled search function AI Overviews, which summarizes listings from third-party sites and pulls that information into search results. Maintaining up-to-date listings across multiple platforms is more important than ever, as you can't predict where these AI tools will source your listing information from. But the more consistent and current your data, the more likely the generated overview will be accurate. And this leads to better visibility, higher engagement, and ultimately more success for your business.

The anatomy of an online healthcare listing

Optimizing your listings plays a crucial role in increasing brand visibility and patient acquisition. As you begin this process, focus on a few key elements.

• Location/provider name: Having a separate listing for each location lets you share precise information, since services, hours, and specialties might vary by location. This also means patients add reviews, ratings, and photos unique to each entity.
• Star rating: Star ratings provide an at-a-glance snapshot into the quality of care to expect, which is key to building trust and consumer confidence. Most consumers think 4 stars is the lowest-acceptable rating.
• Service line/specialty: Clearly highlighting the expertise at each location is critical for guiding consumers, improving visibility, and boosting conversion rates. In today’s digital-first world, consumers rely on AI, search engines, and online directories to find the exact care they need.
• Reviews: Consumers do their research before choosing a healthcare provider or facility. And reviews remain a fixture in this step of the process. Ratings and reviews of the provider and facility are the #1 and #2 factor in consumers’ decision-making process.
• Pictures: Images are known to improve engagement and conversion rates. Highlighting photos of your facilities and providers gives people a sense of what to expect.
• Website link: Your organization’s own website is the most trusted site for information. If you offer online scheduling, giving people the option to “book now” lets you capture consumers ready to act.
• Contact information: Keep addresses, phone numbers, and hours updated to avoid confusion and help interested parties take the next step.

The importance of location-specific market research

Location-specific market research gives healthcare organizations the right information to address local demands and trends and perform well in consumer searches. These insights help companies tailor marketing strategies to the unique needs, preferences, demographics, and behaviors of consumers within specific communities.

But without alignment across a health system, the brand can still suffer. For example, when a large health system acquires multiple hospitals over time, the hospitals often retain the original names and branding to capitalize on existing community recognition within specific markets. This, however, can create a disconnect: Consumers may not associate these facilities with the larger healthcare system. As a result, efforts to build brand recognition and earn consumer trust in local markets may fall short.

This can also affect organizations at the specialty level. Even if an organization invests in making specialty services information more accessible, consumers may still have trouble identifying where to go for orthopedics or cardiology services—or whatever else they’re looking for. And difficulty accessing services can affect the entire brand.

So, what's a marketing team to do?

Tech-driven solutions like Press Ganey’s Market Navigator give you sharp insights into how your brand is perceived in different areas, how well individual practices and facilities are recognized locally, and where you can ramp up your marketing efforts.

Learn more about our solutions for healthcare, including our all-in-one Human Experience platform. Reach out to a consumer experience and marketing expert, and see for yourself how our brand and growth technologies can transform your organization.