Google Co-op was released in Beta this early May to introduce its users to a new concept of community and social tagging of websites that may influence the way we see search engine results in the future. Google claims that it “is a platform which enables you to use your expertise to help other users find information.” This means that if a person considers him or herself an expert on a particular subject, he or she may develop their own specialized search for the topic and can “label” web pages and websites believed to be the most authoritative on that topic. This also allows experts the ability to “suggest appropriate query refinements” which suggests to us that it will also allow them to alter the order and positioning that we see websites appearing in these filtered search engine results.
When Google announced the Co-op feature, it revealed that “health” was one of the topics of focus and they appeared to be working with a handful of trusted organizations in the health community to begin filtering and labeling health information. At the moment, there are seven organizations listed by Google as “contributors” that are using tags provided by Google to identify the most authoritative sites. Some of these participating organizations include the “National Library of Medicine,” “Health on the Net Foundation” and “Harvard Medical School.”
These tags/labels are currently categorized into four different areas:
- Condition Info
- Drug Info
- For Doctors
- Info Type
Google claims that as the quality of the main topics (such as “health”) and the contributions improve, it will be made more available to its users on Google.com for searches, even unrelated to health.
What impact will Google Co-op have on health-related searches?�
For now, the diagnosed and undiagnosed patient will still continue to search for information the same way as they have in the past, encountering search engine results displayed in the usual format. As Google Co-op begins to play a more prominent role (it is beginning to appear in search engine results, but still at its infancy), they may find, along with regular search engine results, an additional menu of topics at the top of the screen listing hyperlinks like “Symptoms” and “Treatment” for the condition/disease used in the search. If a person chooses to click on one of these hyperlinks, they will be taken to a Google result page that has been filtered through the Google Co-op labeling system, and it is possible that many pharmaceutical websites will not initially appear in these filtered search results.
What can search engine marketers do to rank highly for searchers using Google’s Co-op?
Considering that only a handful of trusted organizations are presently labeling websites for the Google Co-op feature, strategies and techniques for optimization are still developing. Catalyst on-line’s search marketing team is researching ways to influence and increase the visibility of a pharmaceutical website within this new feature. As Google Co-op becomes more mainstream and more open to the public, the opportunities and drawbacks of this feature will become more evident and a solid strategy will be defined and implemented.
The only thing that is certain is that the battle between search engine marketers and Google to gain the very best placement in search engine results, continues.
