More threads by JoshuaMackens

JoshuaMackens

Local Search Expert
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Hey guys, having a doozy of a time here.

So there's a dentist with 3 GMB page:

1) Practice
2) Dentist A
3) Dentist B

Dentist A profile has all of the reviews. They want it showing up all of the time. Whenever you Google Dentist A's name or the Practice's name.

Whenever you Google Dentist A's name, Dentist A's profile comes up with all of the reviews. No issues there.

Whenever you Google the Practice, the Practice comes up with no reviews. This is the issue.

It would be no problem if he were a single practitioner. I would just merge the two pages together. But since he has another dentist with him (Dentist B) that also has a Google My Business page, I can't do that.

I tried to remove the website from the Practice and change the category to deoptimize it. I also changed the name of Dentist B to "Practice: Dentist B" to maybe get it to show up for "Practice" since it has the practice name in it now and the Practice profile is deoptimized.

Nothing.

So, does anyone else know anything I can do to get Dentist B's profile to show up for the Practice name as well as his own name?

Basically, we want the Practice profile to cease ranking and Dentist B's profile to rank for brand terms and dentist terms.

Links provided.
 
There are probably some short term solutions you could try but I honestly don't think anything will stick long term. For example, you could add the practice name to Dentist A's profile (after their name) and it will help the relevance.

However, the reason why I don't think it will work long-term is because the practice listing is literally what the user was searching for. Google's entire design is to give the user what they searched for, not something else. Fighting against that fundamental never ends up working out too well.
 
There is a fundamental business problem with this setup. You have two doctors working in the same practice, why would they want to split reviews between three different GMBs. Ideal a management team should be rowing in the same direction.

I know that professionals can get their individual GMBs, but to me, it just doesn't make sense here.
 
There is a fundamental business problem with this setup. You have two doctors working in the same practice, why would they want to split reviews between three different GMBs. Ideal a management team should be rowing in the same direction.

I know that professionals can get their individual GMBs, but to me, it just doesn't make sense here.

The problem is that most practitioners don't set up their own GMB pages. Google finds out about them and does it for them. Then they have to work with what they're given.

What needs to happen is Google can connect GMB pages together and show reviews across the spectrum of pages as they correlate to a brand. That's what users would want to see anyway. And Google is sophisticated enough to make this happen but their commitment to local seems to be extremely low so I doubt it will happen in the short term or maybe even ever.
 
There are probably some short term solutions you could try but I honestly don't think anything will stick long term. For example, you could add the practice name to Dentist A's profile (after their name) and it will help the relevance.

However, the reason why I don't think it will work long-term is because the practice listing is literally what the user was searching for. Google's entire design is to give the user what they searched for, not something else. Fighting against that fundamental never ends up working out too well.


Can he add the practice name when there are multiple practitioners? I thought that option was only available to solo practitioners?

Anyway, I think the other replies have hit the nail...if customers are searching for the brand name then Google will, more than likely, show the brand GMB listing. If you've already de-optimized the practice listing then I can't think what else to try other than removing the listing which isn't a great idea.

In this case, it's a flawed strategy of the practice to not focus on the practice listing. But you're right, Joshua, the bigger flaw is Google's unwillingness to connect the dots and somehow consolidate practice/practitioner listings.
 
Hey guys, having a doozy of a time here.

So there's a dentist with 3 GMB page:

1) Practice
2) Dentist A
3) Dentist B

Dentist A profile has all of the reviews. They want it showing up all of the time. Whenever you Google Dentist A's name or the Practice's name.

Whenever you Google Dentist A's name, Dentist A's profile comes up with all of the reviews. No issues there.

Whenever you Google the Practice, the Practice comes up with no reviews. This is the issue.

It would be no problem if he were a single practitioner. I would just merge the two pages together. But since he has another dentist with him (Dentist B) that also has a Google My Business page, I can't do that.

I tried to remove the website from the Practice and change the category to deoptimize it. I also changed the name of Dentist B to "Practice: Dentist B" to maybe get it to show up for "Practice" since it has the practice name in it now and the Practice profile is deoptimized.

Nothing.

So, does anyone else know anything I can do to get Dentist B's profile to show up for the Practice name as well as his own name?

Basically, we want the Practice profile to cease ranking and Dentist B's profile to rank for brand terms and dentist terms.

Links provided.

It looks like someone marked the Practice listing as "Permanently Closed." That will do more damage to search results. I have several clients who have multiple practitioners at one location and multi-location practices. There's a strategy that can help you gain more traffic using all three listings.

It looks like this practice can benefit from a review generation strategy. I suggest using the brand profile to obtain the reviews.
 

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