Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
SEO - Should individual doctors at facility claim a Google My Business profile?
-
My client is a physician facility with several doctors practicing at the facility. When doing a Google search for some of their practices such as "family practice" one of the doctor's profiles will display in the Google Local pack - however it is not linked to the facility website where their profile exists.
As of right now, we are using YEXT and other tools to claim Google Business Profiles for each practice, not the individual doctors. If there are unclaimed accounts for individual doctors, they are alerting Google that it’s a duplicate and should be taken down.
Is this the right process to follow for SEO best practices or should we be claiming both the business and individual doctor profiles? The reason they are not claiming individual doctor profiles is to cut down on duplicate reviews as part of the Reputation Management Program.
Advice much appreciated!
-
Hey Jared,
So sorry to hear about your duplicates issue. This may be one of those scenarios which would require a consultant looking directly at your dashboard. You may need to engage someone with good skills to do this ... but, before you do so, can you let me know:
-
Are any of the practitioners sharing a phone number with one another or with the practice, itself?
-
What exact language are you seeing in the dashboard regarding the duplicates?
Thanks!
-
-
I've had the same question with our agency's healthcare clients. We have followed the guidelines that are listed in GMB for multiple practitioners in a practice which I've listed below. However, even after following these suggested practices, our GMB dashboard is showing duplicate address issues.
Google My Business Guidelines on Individual Practitioner Local Listings:
Individual practitioners (e.g. doctors, lawyers, real estate agents)
An individual practitioner is a public-facing professional, typically with his or her own customer base. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, financial planners, and insurance or real estate agents are all individual practitioners. Listings for practitioners may include title or degree certification (e.g. Dr., MD, JD, Esq., CFA).An individual practitioner should create his or her own dedicated listing if:
He or she operates in a public-facing role. Support staff should not create their own listings.
He or she is directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours.
A practitioner should not have multiple listings to cover all of his or her specializations.Learn more
Multiple practitioners at one location
If the practitioner is one of several public-facing practitioners at this location:The organization should create a listing for this location, separate from that of the practitioner.
The title of the listing for the practitioner should include only the name of the practitioner, and shouldn’t include the name of the organization.Although we have followed the suggested steps to listing individual practitioners in local search, Google is still indicating duplicate address issues between the practitioners and the practice itself.
Any advice on how to handle the duplicate address issue? I appreciate any feedback.
-
Hey Chris,
Multi-practitioner business models have the option to either:
-
Promote the practice + promote the practitioners, or
-
Just promote the practice
If you go with the first, the main thing is to be sure that each practitioner has a unique landing page on the website (to which his/her citations link) and that each has his or her own phone number (separate from the practice's main phone number). Taking these precautions should normally prevent any issues with merging, but I am not quite sure what you mean about duplicate reviews. Are you saying that the patients are posting a review for the practice and then posting the same review again for a specific doctor? A little clarification on that might help.
If you go with the second option, then, yes, you can attempt to get rid of citations for the practitioners, but, because you are talking about a medical practice, it's very important to dig into Google's history with not closing doctor/dentist duplicates. It may be that the Yext rep with whom you're communicating is unaware of this. Note Linda Buquet's remarks on this previous Moz thread regarding this: https://azwa.1clkaccess.in/community/q/dental-practice-google-and-dentist-personal-google
Hope this give some good food for thought.
-
-
You're currently on the right track and for all the right reasons. As a user, I'd rather see the surgery rather than an individual doctor and as you mentioned, splitting your reviews across multiple doctors isn't ideal.
From your side of things, you're obviously better off having the doctor's surgery listed and having the potential to drive traffic to the website.
Another factor that I'm not 100% sure about is how the current situation of individual doctors being listed will play with Google guidelines.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Listing Doesn't Appeare on 3Pack anymore
Hi, One of my GMB listing suddenly stopped ranking in the 3Pack Results. It used to always rank in 1st or 2nd position in the 3Pack results, Suddenly since 24th May it completely Flatlined, I don't know why but It doesn't show up in the results, or when I click see more. It completely vanished for that term locally. My Listing is based in Brisbane, QLD, Australia and it doesn't show up for that term in The Brisbane area. But when the Location info is Australia and not Brisbane, Australia it shows up again. I don't know what is the problem in this case... Any Suggestions will be much appreciated.
Local Listings | | Moxoms10 -
Google My Business - Service Area - Use Zip Codes or City Names?
Google allows you to choose up to 20 locations as service areas, and you can choose based on cities, counties, or zip codes. I'm trying to determine if zip codes, cities, or counties are better to select for our GMB profiles. We are located in the US. I am thinking it's best to use all 20 areas allowed on a profile as long as they are relevant, generally giving Google all the info they will let you provide is best. I also am leaning toward using zip codes because it also includes the city when you choose by zip code. For example: Entered the zip code 21009 and the service area selection provided was: Abingdon, MD 21009, USA Entering the city/state returns a selection of Abingdon, MD, USA I also think it may have to do with how people search and find your business as well? Does anyone have experience with this? Best practices? My google searching has not turned up any reliable info.
Local Listings | | WadeBayMgmt0 -
Google My Business -Choosing Multiple Categories
Hi friends, I'm trying to work out what would the practice be for a business who is operating in different categories in terms of displaying those categories in Google My Business account. We have a client who is supplying both catering and cleaning products (both categories are core). In this case, listing those two categories in GMB would be alright or should I expect a negative impact on results related to both categories as we have chosen multiple categories? Any advice would be appreciated greatly!
Local Listings | | bbop331 -
For Google's Structured Data, should I change my listings from Product schema to Local Business schema?
I was reading Google's Structured Data spec, and I'm considering changing the schema of our listing pages from the Product schema to the Local Business schema. Is this a good idea? To give you a little more info, the pages that I'm classifying are listings for physical spaces that our website rents out for activities, such as meetings. Here's an example of a listing: https://www.peerspace.com/pages/listings/550ddcde2f352d0800fc186b Our goal is to add the proper schema.org tags to the page so that our spaces show up in local searches, such as "meeting space in San Francisco." The problem is that when we add location microdata (addressLocality, addressRegion, etc.) to our current "Product" schema, Google tells us that "Products" can't have a location. However, we aren't quite a "Local Business" either, since we don't publicly share our space's street addresses—only the space's neighborhood/city/state for privacy reasons. As a result, we get an error from Google's Structured Data Tool as a "Local Business" page because "streetAddress" is required for Local Businesses. Should we switch to the Local Business schema anyway, even though we get structured data errors for streetAddress? Or is it better not to include the location information in the microdata so that we don't have errors? Does Google penalize you for incomplete tags? Any input is appreciated!
Local Listings | | stuartstein0 -
Is there a purpose to the "google my business" description?
Hi there Can someone tell me if the description serves a purpose in the google my business profile since:
Local Listings | | coolhandluc
a) It is not displayed anywhere as far as i have seen (maps, 3 pack local results, knowledge graph, organic results)
b) It is no longer considered as a ranking factor since it was abused so much Thanks0 -
Concerned about cannibalization for local SEO results. Should we move some of our location pages to a subdomain?
Currently we are providing local SEO recommendations for a well known pharmacy chain. Like most major brands they enjoy multiple organic (not just 3 pack results) listings when people search for local phrases such as "Dallas pharmacy clinics'". The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page. We are seeing multiple listings both branded and non-branded search queries. Our concern is that Google will someday decide to choose one listing as the most authoritative and nix the rest of the local listings which will reduce their first page search engine saturation. To maintain first page saturation we are considering recommending to the client that they move some of their location listings
Local Listings | | RosemaryB
to a subdomain (different IP address) to avoid a Google "clean up". Please note that our client is certainly not using any "doorway" pages but some of these are very scarce on content. They do not have an issue with duplicate content either. By using subdomains could we help maintain our client's first page saturation? Any links to articles would be much appreciated.0 -
Wrong Category Displaying Google Business Page?
Our firm keeps displaying "bankruptcy attorney" on google business page. Granted, we do that, as well as a variety of other services, but our primary category is "Personal Injury Attorney". I was told the categories are randomly selected, but I don't think that's true. Every time I've looked (or had other people look for us) on local, it displays as "bankruptcy attorney." What should I do? Is there a way to lock in the "Personal Injury Attorney" category, so it's the one that displays? Should I get rid of all the other categories except for "personal injury attorney?" Any other suggestion? Thanks, Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Are citations the way to go even if there is no Google Places listing
If there are no Google Places / Local listing for a keyword search term, for example... "web design vancouver", do building citations still help in enabling websites to move up the organic rankings?
Local Listings | | Gavo0