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Last week the drug manufacturer Merck pulled their pain reliefmedication Vioxx (rofecoxib) from the market due to studieslinking higher incidence of heart attacks and strokes to longterm use of their medication. The highly profitable medicinewas aimed at Rheumatoid Arthritis sufferers and others whowerent able to stomach aspirin, which is arguably moreeffective 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.comas of September 30, 2004. The site is likely to keep thatranking now that hundreds of thousands are flocking to thesearch engines and typing in "Vioxx" to learn if they ortheir loved ones are at risk of heart attack from takingthe medication. News organizations are all linking to http://www.Vioxx.comsite from online news stories about the health concerns andfinancial repurcussions to Merck of the sudden recall. Merckhas run full page ads in top newspapers nationwide addressingthe sudden action and sending those millions of readers tothe http://www.Vioxx.com site and http://www.Merck.com siteto read disclaimers and learn how to get refunds for themedication they already have in their medicine cabinets. Theinbound links will soar at a point when they probably wantit most so they can present their case to web visitors. Taking the second position is the FDA page outlining the recalland linking to more info at the FDA sitehttp://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/vioxx/default.htmThird place for the single word "Vioxx" also belongs to an FDApage and fourth and fifth positions are owned by a site thatappears to be a drug index at http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/rofecox_ad.htm Sixth place is currently held byhttp://www.medicinenet.com/rofecoxib/article.htm at a medicalsite that dominates for many drug and medical terms due to extensive discussion boards and informational pages aboutthousands of medical conditions and their treatments. Sevenththrough tenth position are CNNs news story on the recall,then Yahoo News with a similar story, two online pharmacieswith curiously blank pages. Try to sell Tylenol from thosepages guys - dont waste the traffic with blank pages!Pay-per-click advertisements were posted by agressive classaction attorneys to run alongside organic search rankings andappeared immediately on the day of the recall announcement.The first search for the word Vioxx done at Google on FridayOctober 1st brought up an advertisement forhttp://www.Vioxx-heart-attack.com as the first result in theAdwords listings along the right side of the page. The bidswere below a dollar a click on Friday, but are rapidlyescalating as ever more law firms jump into the bidding war. The real test comes now for organic search engine optimizationfirms as they set out to gain top rankings for their classaction attorney clients. Interestingly, Ive just finishedreading the John Grisham novel, "King of Torts", about a young"mass torts" attorney that made over an hundred milliondollars by being the first to run nationwide television adsseeking clients injured by a faulty drug manufactured by agiant pharmaceutical company. Although the protaganist in thestory has a web site to collect leads, nothing is mentionedof PPC advertising nor is it likely to be discussed in novels. In "King of Torts" nothing is ever mentioned about organicsearch engine ranking of his web site either. Settlement seemsto have come faster than would be possible to gain top rankingsfor a highly competitive search phrase. It will be extremelyinteresting to watch domain name sales related to Vioxx, sincekeywords in domain names always help rankings. Some that areshowing up in PPC ads include the previously mentionedVioxx-heart-attack.com, Vioxx-side-effects.com, Vioxx-Claim.comVioxxRecallLawyer.com and Vioxx-Lawsuits.com. As of October 4th, 2004 the only NON-news related site in thetop 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 athttp://www.bigclassaction.com/class_action/vioxx.html whichhas 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 classaction section at http://injury.findlaw.com/vioxx/ which asksyour zip code on first visit and must use IP delivery forrobots visiting the first time since there is nothing on thatpage about Vioxx if youve never visited the page before. Now we will see what techniques are used by Search EngineOptimization firms that hurriedly post sites full of linksto gain search position for the word Vioxx in order to sellmore links to those agressive law firms and attorneys (andtheyll run expensive click-through Google Adsense ads). Without doubt, the most SEO savvy attorneys will compete ata fever pitch for top rankings over the next few weeks.

About the Author

Mike Banks Valentine does search engine optimization for http://www.VioxxLegalHelpCenter.orgKeep informed as new sites dominate the phrases related toVioxx, heart attack, stroke, Vioxx recall, class action suit,Vioxx personal injury claim, Vioxx legal help, About Vioxx athttp://www.RealitySEO.com