by Mike Banks Valentine
© October 4, 2004
Last week the drug manufacturer Merck pulled their pain relief
medication Vioxx (rofecoxib) from the market due to studies linking
higher incidence of heart attacks and strokes to long term use
of their medication. The highly profitable medicine was aimed
at Rheumatoid Arthritis sufferers and others who weren't able
to stomach aspirin, which is arguably more effective than Vioxx
is for most pain relief.
Top search engine rankings for the trademarked word "Vioxx"
were dominated by Merck-owned web site http://www.Vioxx.com
as of September 30, 2004. The site is likely to keep that ranking
now that hundreds of thousands are flocking to the search engines
and typing in "Vioxx" to learn if they or their loved ones are
at risk of heart attack from taking the medication.
News organizations are all linking to http://www.Vioxx.com
site from online news stories about the health concerns and financial
repurcussions to Merck of the sudden recall. Merck has run full
page ads in top newspapers nationwide addressing the sudden action
and sending those millions of readers to the http://www.Vioxx.com
site and http://www.Merck.com
site to read disclaimers and learn how to get refunds for the
medication they already have in their medicine cabinets. The inbound
links will soar at a point when they probably want it most so
they can present their case to web visitors. Taking the second
position is the FDA page outlining the recall
and linking to more info at the FDA site http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/vioxx/default.htm
Third place for the single word "Vioxx" also belongs to an FDA
page and fourth and fifth positions are owned by a site that appears
to be a drug index at http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/rofecox_ad.htm
Sixth place is currently held by http://www.medicinenet.com/rofecoxib/article.htm
at a medical site that dominates for many drug and medical terms
due to extensive discussion boards and informational pages about
thousands of medical conditions and their treatments. Seventh
through tenth position are CNN's news story on the recall, then
Yahoo News with a similar story, two online pharmacies with curiously
blank pages. Try to sell Tylenol from those pages guys - don't
waste the traffic with blank pages!
Pay-per-click advertisements were posted by agressive class
action attorneys to run alongside organic search rankings and
appeared immediately on the day of the recall announcement.
The first search for the word Vioxx done at Google on Friday
October 1st brought up an advertisement for http://www.Vioxx-heart-attack.com
as the first result in the Adwords listings along the right side
of the page. The bids were below a dollar a click on Friday, but
are rapidly escalating as ever more law firms jump into the bidding
war.
The real test comes now for organic search engine optimization
firms as they set out to gain top rankings for their class action
attorney clients. Interestingly, I've just finished reading the
John Grisham novel, "King of Torts", about a young "mass torts"
attorney that made over an hundred million dollars by being the
first to run nationwide television ads seeking clients injured
by a faulty drug manufactured by a giant pharmaceutical company.
Although the protaganist in the story has a web site to collect
leads, nothing is mentioned of PPC advertising nor is it likely
to be discussed in novels.
In "King of Torts" nothing is ever mentioned about organic search
engine ranking of his web site either. Settlement seems to have
come faster than would be possible to gain top rankings for a
highly competitive search phrase. It will be extremely interesting
to watch domain name sales related to Vioxx, since keywords in
domain names always help rankings. Some that are showing up in
PPC ads include the previously mentioned Vioxx-heart-attack.com,
Vioxx-side-effects.com, Vioxx-Claim.com VioxxRecallLawyer.com
and Vioxx-Lawsuits.com.
As of October 4th, 2004 the only NON-news related site in the
top organic results at Google that are NOT online pharmacies,
government agency sites, NIH (National Institutes of Health) or
an information site http://arthritis.about.com/od/vioxx/
is a site that emphasizes giant class action lawsuits at http://www.bigclassaction.com/class_action/vioxx.html
which has a PageRank of 5 as of October 4th at 5pm Pacific time.
The final ranked site of top 30 for the single word "Vioxx" at
Google is the legal information site Findlaw in their class action
section at http://injury.findlaw.com/vioxx/
which asks your zip code on first visit and must use IP delivery
for robots visiting the first time since there is nothing on that
page about Vioxx if you've never visited the page before.
Now we will see what techniques are used by Search Engine Optimization
firms that hurriedly post sites full of links to gain search position
for the word Vioxx in order to sell more links to those agressive
law firms and attorneys (and they'll run expensive click-through
Google Adsense ads). Without doubt, the most SEO savvy attorneys
will compete at a fever pitch for top rankings over the next few
weeks.
Bambi
Francisco, Net Business Editor at CBS Marketwatch covered this
from the Paid Search PPC perspective on Tuesday October 5 (Free membership required to read)
----------------------------------
Mike Banks Valentine does search engine optimization for http://www.VioxxLegalHelpCenter.org
Keep informed as new sites dominate the phrases related to Vioxx,
heart attack, stroke, Vioxx recall, class action suit, Vioxx personal
injury claim, Vioxx legal help, About Vioxx at http://www.RealitySEO.com
Contact Mike at http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm
---------------------------------
