More and more people are searching health information online, via Google. The information people find is often downright wrong. The Belgian governmental medical website gezondheidenwetenschap.be wanted to warn the public of the possible risks. They wanted more visitors and be known as a reliable source for medical information.

By conveniently using Google AdWords we reached only the people we needed to reach (people looking for online health information). Just at the moment they needed a warning (the exact moment they were searching). We bought the 150 most googled symptoms in Dutch. When our target group saw and clicked our awareness Google Adwords ad 'Don't google it, check a reliable source', they were directed to the medical site ‘gezondheidenwetenschap.be’, a medical platform supported by the Flemish government.

We hosted a video on their reliable platform clearly demonstrating the risk of googling and trusting online health information. This video gave our awareness message spreadability potential. Our awareness message was relevant, far beyond the borders of Belgium. That is why we concluded the campaign with a 'how we did it' video. National and international press applauded our digital solution and the wittiness of the idea of using Google to tackle a problem which, in many cases, took place on Google.

We bought the 150 most googled symptoms in Dutch. By conveniently using Google AdWords we reached only the people we needed to reach & just at the moment they needed a warning. So whenever people searched for one of those symptoms, they saw our message.

By conveniently using Google AdWords, we alerted the population when they were googling their symptoms. For example, if you googled “twitching eyelid”, the first result was the following message: “Don’t google it, check a reliable source.” This lead to the medical site ‘gezondheidenwetenschap.be’, a medical platform supported by the Flemish government. We hosted a video on their reliable platform clearly demonstrating the risk googling and trusting online health information.

• 1,2 million people googled symptoms during the campaign

• 7% click-through rate (benchmark 2%)

• 200% more visitors to the healthandscience site during the campaign

• Even today, the healthandscience platform has twice as much visitors than before

• Our most popular symptom turned out to be: hemorrhoids