Etna Interactive

Search Engines Yield Nearly Identical Inquiry Results

Everyone knows that Google holds the lion’s share of the search market … but does Google offer any inherent advantage in moving a person from prospect to patient? As it turns out, the data says, “No!”

We wondered whether a Bing searcher was any more likely to become a patient than a Google searcher? We wanted to know how North America’s 3 largest search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) stacked up when it came to delivering patients to your practice. For our answer, we examined conversion data for 15 plastic surgery practices for the first half of 2013, and the findings were eerily consistent.

While Google delivers a disproportionate share of search traffic to plastic surgeons’ sites, the people they deliver are no more or less likely to take action than visitors from other search engines.

  • Google yields 1 patient inquiry for every 36 site visits.
  • Yahoo yields 1 patient inquiry for every 32 site visits.
  • Bing yields 1 patient inquiry for every 36 site visits.

Search Engine Conversion Rate Infographic

It’s not clear why Yahoo yields slightly more inquiries per visitor. But with all search engines being equal (at least in conversion), it makes sense to remain focused on improving rankings on Google, where the greatest volume of plastic surgery searches is performed.


Sign up for our newsletter to have these articles emailed to you.

Leave a Comment

Fields marked with * are required.

What happens when the best photo gallery in the business meets AI? First Draft for Curator B&A generates SEO-optimized case descriptions for next-level gallery visibility and performance.