Healthline breaks ahead of the pack as one of the fastest growing health information web domains in the US, report says
US Healthline Media announced today that it has seen 39 per cent audience growth within the past year with 63 million unique visitors a month visiting their site, making it one of the fastest growing health information web domains in the US.
Based on Comscore's June 2016 report, Healthline.com grew from the sixth to the third largest health information web domain over the past year, reaching 26 million unique monthly visitors in the health information category where many others are flat or declining. Healthline Media is a San Francisco-based company that provides health and wellness information to consumers through its website, Healthline.com.
Healthlines' focus on social media channels and producing original content includes 132 therapy areas, 24 Facebook health communities and 23 topic newsletters. The availability of fresh information has helped propel them to becoming one of the most sought after sites for health. Additionally, along with Healthline.com, the company recently acquired MedicalNewsToday.com, as well as media distribution across the top five health information web domains in the U.S., including Livestrong and Drugs.com.
"Differentiated, empathy-minded content is our approach to earning and retaining consumer trust," says Healthline editor-in-chief, Tracy Stickler. "We create content on demand, and, in response to the specific questions and conversations happening each and every day about health. We analyze both the spoken and unspoken needs that our data reveals and focus on producing a better, more engaging and 'human' content experience," says Stickler.
The result has seen for a Healthline URL in Google's index averaging about 25 times the visits of other top health websites' indexed URLs, the company notes.
One of the key strategies of Healthline.com is to produce content that is unique and original.
"Healthline is focused on delivering on the promise of the Return on Relationship (ROR) for our audience and for our customers. That is why our near real-time data plays as much of a role as our handshakes and hugs," says Dante Gaudio, SVP of Healthline Media Sales. "Using data distilled from our Facebook communities and ratings as well as content on the dot com site, along with additional first-party data from our owned and exclusively-represented media properties, Healthline's team leverages quantitative and qualitative insights to fine-tune content marketing and media targeting. Our distinctive 'demand content' campaigns are rooted in data from our Healthline Planning Insights Lab. Furthermore, we make this data available to our agency partners to enable them to refine and improve their overall marketing ROI," says Gaudio.
Today's news is the culmination of several strategic growth and branding moves for the company since the start of the year. In January, Healthline raised $95m in growth equity financing from Summit Partners, establishing itself as a standalone entity. In March 2016, Healthline acquired MedicalNewsToday.com, currently the number one ranked (Google and Yahoo) website in the medical news category, as well as sister site MediLexicon.com, a comprehensive online database of medical abbreviations with over 200,000 definitions that are constantly updated.
In June 2016, Healthline released its first consumer app focused on a chronic condition, MS Buddy, which allows individuals with multiple sclerosis to connect with and support one another. The MS Buddy app provides a daily match with someone of a similar profile to enable instant highly personalized community and support. The native MS Buddy app is available for free in the App Store and Google Play.
"Becoming an ally for consumers does not happen overnight. Healthline has been on a long, deliberate, mission-driven journey, employing a 'user research first' strategy for its content," says David Kopp, CEO of Healthline Media. "We are proud to announce today that it is working. Outpacing competitive sites in growth and achieving Top 3 leadership positioning for the market means we are uniquely effective at answering the questions and concerns of health seekers. We meet users in their most critical information channels: search and social."