ClubW Blog

RevaHealth.com - A search engine for Health Clinics.

Its a straight forward concept. A niche business. But doesn’t Google take care of all search anyway? So Revahealth.com must be adding value over straight forward search. The tagline for the site is “Find & Compare Health Clinics anywhere”.

Lets put that to the test. Lets say I am interested in getting my teeth sorted in Belfast. How does RevaHealth.com compare against Google for the search “Dental Care, Belfast”.

Step 1 is Search Initially, RevaHealth.com does not compare well against Google on this count. In terms of Organic search results, the above the fold screen in Google provides 6 times the number of results.

While Google provides an extremely handy map with the results, RevaHealth.com does provide additional textual information; address, specialities and a brief blurb. Most significantly, RevaHealth.com provides Pricing information where available. (However, this seems to be present in only a tiny minority of results).

Further search options are available in the form of Filters on Location, Treatments, Specialisation and Facilities/Services. These are search options Google just can’t provide.

For further information, any result can be clicked on to reveal a fairly comprehensive “brochure” - akin to a private website for each clinic. (One drawback to this is the URL. These brochures could be viable websites for clinics, but I can’t imagine many of them printing http://www.revahealth.com/dentists/northern-ireland#cid=91&pid=0&problemid=0&qty=0&rid=1&dcid=285&fcid=144&city=&page=0&displaypage=&location=1&sf=0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0&distance=100&sids=18579&clinicid=18369 on their flyers.)

So my overall opinion is that RevaHealth.com does make it easier to find a specific health service, although the presentation of search results is sub-optimal in my opinion.

What about Comparing the various search results?

It maybe that I am missing something here, but I cannot see any comparison technology. Fair enough, the additional filters on the Search allow a user to omit certain results should they not meet certain criteria, but that hardly enables comparison.

A few Niggles…

• Google Ads dominate the search results, to the detriment of RevaHealth’s own results. In the search result area, a good 20% of real estate above the fold is dedicated to paid-for advertising. I can’t imagine the financial gain is enough to offset the devaluation of the system’s own results.
• The font on the site appears to be a light grey. I am not a graphic designer, but I find this hard to read. is it just me?
• Consider me a dumb user (as all users should be…). I found the Auto-complete in the Search fields confusing. In the image below, if I choose the first option for Belfast, does this mean I am missing out on results under the other 2 Belfast options. (Please bear in mind that no question is stupid if it can be asked).

Suggestions:

1. Simplify the Brochure URLs - Make these pages an asset, a reason for clinics to sign up.
2. Increase the value of Revahealth’s results by removing all third party advertising.

2 More Points:

1. This is a product with a potentially global reach - I assume this is the plan, I hope it makes it.
2. The RevaHealth Blog is an excellent resource for small web businesses dealing with SEO, funding, and technology.