Reviews Reveal Their Mighty Muscles

Google vs. Yelp (Yelp looks afraid)

A little over two months ago I posted information about surveys from BrightLocal and Search Engine Land showing the trends in the use of online reviews by the public. Just over 60% of those surveyed in 2011 said that they used online reviews to determine whether or not a local business was a good business. In 2013 that increased to about 85%. Equally significant is the growing trust people have in those reviews. When asked, “Do you trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations?” in 2011 66% said they did. In 2013 that was up to 79%. This is a trend that clearly will continue. And I advised dentists that if their website doesn’t seem to be bringing in enough new patients, one of the reasons could be that bad online reviews are killing conversions.

So I was particularly interested when someone from softwareadvice.com recently forwarded us the results of an extensive survey they did on the use of reviews by prospective patients of physicians. (See their posted article: How Your Patients Are Using Online Reviews. Software Advice knows a lot about reviews – they are an online resource offering reviews of dental practice management software and other business software.) They used a random sample of 4515 patients in the U.S., and their findings are significant. I’d like to analyze what they say about medical marketing and then compare it to dental marketing.

First, they report that 25% of the patients in their survey used reviews to help select a physician. Our survey of dental patients shows that 41% of them are using reviews to help select their dentist. Knowing what I know about patient behavior, I suspect the lower use of reviews by medical patients is because people are mostly just going to their insurance list to pick a physician. Here is their chart posted next to our chart:

Software Advice interestingly reports that, of those using online reviews, for 62% of them, this is their first step. That is the opposite of what we see in dentistry where the vast majority of patients will either find the dentist’s website or use personal recommendations as a first step and then consult reviews afterward. But since the vast majority of physicians do not have websites that market their practices, that technique won’t work for finding a physician.

As far as review websites, Software Advice reported that the most popular review site was HealthGrades, followed by Yelp, Vitals, and ZocDoc. The most trusted review site was Yelp, followed by HealthGrades. For dentistry, the most popular review site is Google, followed by Yelp. This is probably a result of prospective patients being able to research a dentist on the dentist’s website. Since Google ties the website listing to Google reviews, those reviews are the easiest for people to find. That’s not the case with physicians.

Their surveys brought back to mind my own personal journey in finding a physician and a dentist after I moved to the Phoenix area almost six years ago. I first tried my wife’s physician and found his office too impersonal and rough for me. So I went to our insurance list and picked another physician. After a while I began to get the impression that he and his staff were sloppy, so I decided to get serious about choosing someone new. I spent a Saturday morning poring through reviews of a number of physicians, and finally discovered one with whom I was impressed, and have been with that physician ever since and very happy with him. In choosing a dentist, however, I was able to get almost all the information I needed from the dentist’s website, and then corroborated my conclusions by checking reviews.

I do have one caution to add about the article by Software Advice. In the last section of the article, under “Conclusions” they state: “Get creative: consider offering an incentive such as a giveaway for patients to leave reviews.” I would not do that. This is expressly contrary to the guidelines of key review sites such as Yelp and Google. If you do that and you get found out, they will banish you to purgatory. Ask your patients for reviews. But don’t bribe people, and don’t have them write reviews in your office – ask them to do that at home from their own IP address. These sites are jealously guarding the integrity of the reviews process, and I would advise you to play by their rules.