What are the advantages of True Search? True Search means people have tools and ways to search and pull a web site out among a huge list of hundreds of other dentists. This gives dentists a competitive marketing advantage. By listing strengths and marketing advantages, a dentist can more effectively target the kind of patient they want to reach. True Search uses a sophisticated on-line database. The same type of database that WebCrawler, Lycos, and most other Primary Search Engines use. You'll find that most other directory systems are really "flat file" systems. The problem with "flat file" systems is that each entry is put in by hand and each prospective patient sees the same information no matter what they are looking for. Using our True Search Database, each patient designs a customize "look" based on what's important to them. One shopper may find geography is important while the next may find something else like experience or office hours is more important.
What is the advantage of listing in your database? Let's face it. The biggest problem on the Internet is finding things. Having an ordinary Internet Service Provider or Web Presence Provider build your web site is just not enough anymore. Once your site is up, no one will find it, and listing in an ordinary search engine or directory won't help. The reason is because hundreds or thousands of dentists will have already thought of that before you did. Ultimately, you need a search engine that allows you to differentiate your services, your specialty, and your company from the competition. You need "True Search"™.
The other thing you need is marketing. We advertise our database on major search engines and web sites. This advertising helps to ensure that people seeking dentists go to only one site instead of having to visit thousands of dentist web sites. We also provide general dental information to attract traffic. Basically, we are in the full time business of advertising and marketing web sites for dentists. In addition, we generate, and help traffic and patients find your dental web site.
How can we offer this service free? This service is free because we want to be and remain the "largest" dentist Search Engine on the Internet. The most important reason its free is because adding names and maintaining a "True Search" database is much easily and less expensive than building and maintaining hundreds of directory pages. It takes only seconds for us to add new dentist's names.
I submitted my entry but I can't seem to find it You entry should definitely appear within 20 business days of your submission. If you provided the wrong email address, your submission was probably rejected. If this is the case, please re-submit your listing. On occasion, we have had technical difficulties receiving new applications. You can also try searching by company name.
Why do you need web sites? Put your feet in the shoes of the average patient. If your already shopping on-line, wouldn't you pick a dentist that has a web site. After all, you could visit their web site and become acquainted with their dental practice. You can find out their values and the types of services they have. Or, on the other hand, you could also select a dentist with no web site. To us, a dentist with a web site has a clear and distinct advantage over those without one. In addition, our web dentists receive a priority listing on top of any particular search stack.
Are there other Databases similar to "True Search"? All of the primary search engines (Lycos, WebCrawler, and even Yahoo) use databases. However, these search engines are geared only to find a single global topic out of all the information on the Internet. You can use one of these generic search engines to find a dentist by typing in the word dentist, but thousands of dentists will come up. How do you find the particular dentist you are looking for. Obviously, if you don't know where to start, a primary search engine is always the best place to go. Once you've got an idea of exactly what you want, a primary search engine isn't very helpful. The last search we did on a primary search engine resulted in thousands of web sites with the word "dentist" in them. To find exactly what you want, you need a specific database that has the parameters that define exactly what your want. Building a web site is easy...building and connecting a database to the Internet is much harder and much more expensive. However, we are specialists in software programming, database management, and marketing. Your dental web site is always treated like a business with 24x7 operation and even UPS back-up to ensure its always up.
Won't my entry just get lost in the crowd? No, definitely not! Your dental practice only gets lost when your experience and services are similar to other dentists. Our search engine actually allows you more control over where you appear in the results than any other search database or directory. For one, dentists who have a specialty can differeniate their practice based on their specialty. Make sure your description is brief and as concise as possible. Avoid marketing words. They just take up space and are rarely searched for.
In addition, for a nominal charge, we have options so that you can now upgrade your listing. You can have your dentist site sorted higher with higher priority so that it appears higher in the list. You can make your dentist web listing stick out by making it bold. In addition, if you can deliver more services or provide them in more locations, you can also pay to increase the number of search parameters or services that your company will come up on.
Here's an example of how True Search works. Let's say I'm looking for a dentist who specializes in general dentistry in the state of California and in the city of Fremont. I'm interested in a dentist that provides headphones and clear braces. Now, how in the world would you ever find the dentists who match this description using Yahoo, Excite, or any other search engine on the Internet for that matter. The only way is through our dentist search engine.
What if my specialty is not listed? If you have a marketing advantage, we want to know about it. Our database is not static. We can instantly add a new category or specialty. If you are a dentist customer of ours, we can build special categories to bring your unique marketing advantages to the top of our search engine.
Can I list with multiple cities? Of course. However, you can only list in one city for free. There is a nominal charge for listing additional cities, counties, specialties, etc. - just upgrade your listing.
Can I move up in the list? Of course. The free listing service has the lowest search priority. The final search results from our search engine are actually sorted. Our dentist customers receive top billing. They are our partners and sponsors of this search engine and they have made an investment in its success. In addition, for a nominal fee, you may upgrade your free dental listing to get a higher search order. Once you are in a particular order, you stay in that order for the duration unless someone above you cancels. So if your on top - you'll always be in top, so it pays to get there early.
If I host my dentist web site with you, do I get any special privileges? Yes, we wouldn't have it any other way. First, as we discussed above, you get top billing for any particular search. In other words, if you meet any of the criteria that the target patient is looking for, you name will appear at the top. Second, our dental customers receive a banner graphic that is displayed on the very top of the search engine at the beginning of their hosting period. Since the banner graphic is already built, this reduces your costs if you ever decide to advertise in the "your ad" region of the search engine. Thirdly, customers can have up to five separate states, cities, counties, specialties, etc. without charge. We are planning several other programs and will announce them as they become available.
How is the list maintained? Since its free, won't some of the listings be outdated? Probably a few. But, keep a few things in mind. First, from time-to-time, we will send out an e-mail to our dentist members giving them an opportunity to learn about new services. If the e-mail is returned, we update, enhance, or delete the names from the list. Second, free entries always appear at the bottom and entries that are returned from our mailing move-down one-notch in sort priority. Therefore, inactive entries always automatically go to the bottom of the list. From time to time, we check the bottom names and remove outdated entries.
Is the search results sorted alphabetically? No. The results are sorted by a numerical preference. Our dentists and sponsors are sorted to the top of the list whenever the search criteria makes them available.
Why do you provide dental reference. Isn't that my job as a dentist? There are basically two reasons why we provide this information. First, our traffic is actively seeking dental information and they want this information as soon as possible. By providing information, we give them an added service that encourages repeat and increasing traffic to our web site. Secondly, by providing basic information, the size, cost, and maintenance of you dentist web site can be reduced. Therefore, we can easily add links to your site or incorporate these capabilities into your site.
How can I check for my listing in the database? You can search for a specific dentist by going to the dentist "By-Name" Search Form.
Will you ever charge to do a simple listing in the database? It does cost us to maintain the database. It is possible that if the resource drain necessary to maintain the database dentist listing service becomes large that we would be forced to charge a nominal fee. However, at this time, we have no plans to charge for the standard dentist listing and we hope that we will be able to continue this service forever. We now require a nominal fee to update or change an existing listing.
Why are the search results limited to a certain number of dentist? Our search engine is very popular not just with prospective patients but also with low class net citizens who try to steal our list and who want to send you junk mail. Patients can easily find you by entering the parameters necessary to bring your dental practice to the top. You can also upgrade your listing so that a particular dentist appears in the top of the search results.
Why is the E-mail Address now required? The email address is now used for quality assurance and we will use your email address as our confirmation that your dental listing is accurate and up to date. We will send you an email from time to time; and if it is returned, your listing will be made inactive. The e-mail address you provide must be complete and written as if you were sending email to yourself.
What is a URL/Web Address? At a minimum, you must have at least a basic dentist web address to get patients from the Internet. The web address is what people type in to find your web site. The URL you provide must be complete and it must be actually written as you would need to browse to your web site.
What does URL mean? URL means Uniform Resource Locator. It is your web address. For example, http://www.ToothPick.com.
What is SSL?
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and it is your accurance the
information is protected while it is being sent over the
Internet. You should never submit confidential information over
the Internet without verifying that the information is secure
(using SSL). The information you provide or that you view with
our forms is "encrypted" while it travels over the
Internet using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). (We are certified for
SSL - the recognized standard in Internet Security by VeriSign)
{Serial #: 02:7A:00:0B:F9}.
What is allowed in Company Descriptions? The individual company descriptions can be up to 210 characters long. The company description must follow basic rules of grammer. Only the first character of a sentence and proper names can be captalized. There is no HTML code allowed in the description. The descriptions must be sentence form--not bullet form. Every description is checked by hand to ensure it follows these rules; therefore, you risk the change of slowing your listing down or having it come out incorrect if you don't follow them.