I wrote a piece about a decade ago on this same topic. Has anything changed in the last ten years? Surgery is one area where the more things change, the more they stay the same.
In the last ten years Google has revolutionized the way we look for things, including Rhinoplasty. The internet – this massive information source – has transformed how people advertise and how people, including Rhinoplasty Surgeons, make themselves known.
Looking for rhinoplasty? Just type that search term in Google and a myriad of results will come up. How these results appear, and their order is what every Rhinoplasty surgeon is after. The dogma has been to try and position yourself on the top 5 positions for visibility.
But what is the relationship between those Google results and what you’re really looking for? We “assume” that because the results were pulled by Google in a specific order, then the higher the ranking the better the surgeon. Well, this may not be totally true.
Research has shown that the higher the position on a particular search result, the more traffic will be directed to that particular site. This has driven everyone including rhinoplasty surgeons to hire “experts” to develop websites that try and achieve this. Since Google does not disclose how they position these results, it becomes a guessing game, on what technically an “expert” has to do to position a particular website at the top of these searches.
How does this affect the consumer? The results that a consumer gets may reflect the skill of the website developer more than that of the surgeon. A top result may not necessarily mean that that particular doctor is an expert or does a large number of that particular procedure. It may better reflect a favored algorithm picked by Google to position that result at the top.
So back to square one. After all, this technology has changed how people brand themselves, but the way to choose the right surgeon has not really changed since before the Google era.
It is still about human contact. Something that Google will never be able to replace. You must still go and interview the surgeon, look at his work, decide if he/she specializes in that particular procedure, and make sure you are comfortable with that particular person. It’s not only about the procedure, but also about the professional relationship you’re about to forge with that particular surgeon.
If you’re interested in learning more about how I approach my surgical procedures, please give me a call or send me an email. In the meantime, don’t believe everything you see on Google!