No Appearance in Local pack - group practice favored

[netzkern_AG]

Hi,

One client has a website, Google My Business etc of his own. He ranks ok to good locally for search terms.

However, his entry simply won't show up within the local n-pack (where it objectively should) and also does not appear in the map. It seems to me that instead a group practice with a colleague that has both their names in its name/title. (Moreover, it is in the same spot - they decided to go with different websites and entries of their own, though.) For some reason, this practice is also connected to the ranking website of our client.

I suppose (NAP problems and previously used phone tracking numbers aside) that this group practice essentially blocks the real client-entry from appearing. Has anybody made such experiences?

(My provisional ToDo would look like: Disconnect the group practice from the client's website; erase/merge it if possible; do proper LocalSEO otherwise.)

Regards

Nico

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Nico,

Hate to say it, but this sounds like a serious mess. If there are multiple websites sharing partial or complete NAP and phone numbers being held hostage by third parties, I think:

1. You need a formal audit from a heavy-hitting Local SEO agency to find all of the problems.

2. Even with that, unless you have the authority and green light to launch a massive cleanup, involving all doctors and the practice, your hands may be tied here.

This is one of those really difficult situations one sometimes wades into without realizing the depth of the pool. What you are describing sounds like a very large project, but a good agency can tackle large projects methodically, one step at a time. What is the real concern here is the mention of legal problems and phone numbers being held hostage. There's not going to be a simple solution for this, and it may be that the company needs to work out its internal matters before any SEO team can help them

[netzkern_AG]

Hi,

Thanks for your valuable advice! I fear, due to factors outside my influence, it is a little more complicated.

• AFAIK the group practice still exists ... at least technically.
• It does have a website with a (very) good and fitting domain name that is slightly more than a placeholder.
• Its G+ Page is basically empty.
• There is a Facebook Page for the group practice.
• There is legal dispute(!) about the ownership of the domain and in connection with the group practice. Unfortunately, this limits my actions quite strongly.
• Both their practices are still part of the same Clinic. (Before, they shared a practice at a different location.) The clinic is not important for me.
• The telephone number listed with the group practice goes to the other doctor. I assume that this is a major point of trouble - as above, I probably have currently no way to influence this.
• So: Is there anything I can do if telephone numbers ARE wrong but lead to somebody who has no interest in surrendering those phone numbers or having the entries changed?
• (a former duplicate GMB entry for the client has already been resolved)
• sameAs: thanks for the reminder! I indeed forgot this tiny bit when doing the complete schema.org suite on the website (to good effect, btw.)
• Both doctors have different domains now ... and the one group practice domain; the GMB entry is connected to the Website of Doctor A, though.

So again, thanks for your hints!

Nico

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Nico,

In addition to the good advice from Phillip, I recommend looking carefully at the following:

1. No shared phone numbers.

2. A unique page on the website for each doctor, to which each GMB listing links. Main practice can link to homepage.

3. Try not to share categories between the listings. Give the practice the most important category and find others for the individual practitioners.

[thephilm]

I just went through something very recently that was similar, my doctor left a practice and started his own.  His name continued to rank at the old practice (even when the only trace of his name left was in a title tag).

We did a few things:

• Complete separation of GMB pages.  The pages were very specific for the location and the doctor.  We then tied these to specific location pages instead of homepage.
• Checked all citations / NAP out in the web and updated them to the respective doctor's locations.  We had a similar issue, number/ names etc., were not consistent.
• Used SameAs Schema on their contact page to the GMB page (https://schema.org/sameAs) along with the usual Schema for their location / profession.

End result is that depending on the search location and slight variance of the terms, they will both rank in the 3 pack / map.
Our biggest hurdle was one of their GMB pages was deleted and showed them as permanently closed.  This caused a lot of issues for mobile users looking for phone numbers and directions.