Should Doctors Have a Personal Google Business Profile and a Location Google Business Profile? | Ep. 155

Should doctors have their own Google Business Profile in addition to a location listing? This episode breaks down the difference between practitioner and practice profiles, when a separate doctor Google listing can help, and when it creates duplicate listings, split reviews, and patient confusion. You’ll also learn what to do if a doctor leaves your practice but their Google Business Profile still shows your address, and how to protect your main location listing while you clean it up. 

Episode webpage, shownotes, and blog post: https://propelyourcompany.com/should-doctors-have-a-personal-google-business-profile-and-a-location-google-business-profile/

Book a Google Business Profile Audit: https://propelyourcompany.com/google-business-profile-audit/

NEW Webinar: How to dominate Google Search, Google Maps, AI-driven search results, and get more new patients.

>> Save your spot 🎉

In this 1-Hour SEO Planning Session, you’ll learn what it takes to thrive online and convert online traffic into foot traffic.

Plus, Get a Free Patient-Centered SEO Action Plan to Kickstart Your Strategy!

🎉 Webinar: 

Fix Your AI Visibility Blind Spots:

7 Non-Technical Upgrades Any Clinic Can Do This Week

👉Save your spot: https://propelyourcompany.com/fix/

📞Book a discovery call - Book a discovery call with Propel to see how smart SEO and website design can help your clinic get found online.

https://propelyourcompany.com/ 

Let's Stay Connected:

• Website - https://propelyourcompany.com/
• Free SEO Training 🎉 - https://propelyourcompany.com/learn
• Instagram 
• Facebook
• YouTube

>> Get Started with Clicky - https://clicky.com/66422350  (Google Analytics Alternative / Marketing Website Analytics) 

...

Transcript

Should Doctors Have Two Profiles

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Today we're talking about whether doctors should have a personal Google Business profile plus a location profile. Because depending on how you set it up, it can either help patients find you or it can create duplicates, split reviews, and turn into a maintenance headache. Also, if you've ever had a provider leave and their personal listing still shows up at your practice address, stay with me. That is a super common problem. And later in the episode, I'll walk you through the clean way to handle it without accidentally making your own listing weaker in the process. Hello and welcome to the Clinic Marketing Podcast. This is Darcy Sullivan from Propel Marketing and Design. Let's start by getting really clear on what we're actually talking about, because a lot of people say personal profile when they mean totally different things. A location Google Business Profile is the listing for the physical place patients go. It has your office address, primary phone number, hours, services, photos, posts, and most importantly, the reviews that influence whether someone chooses you. A doctor or practitioner listing is different. That's a listing that represents an individual provider, often named something like Dr. Jane Smith, and it can sometimes show the same address as the practice or a different address depending on where they see patients. So the real question is not, can I have both? Because technically, sometimes you can. The real question is, should you? And if you do, will it strengthen your visibility or create confusion that costs you patience? Here's the biggest thing to understand about Google Business Profiles. Google is trying to show the most helpful, most trustworthy result for the search. When Google sees multiple listings that look like they represent the same thing, or multiple listings tied to the same address without clear differentiation, you can end up with split signals. And split signals usually show up in a few ways. Reviews get divided between listings, patients get confused about who they are booking with, calls go to the wrong phone number, messages go unanswered, or the wrong listing shows up for the wrong search. That is why more profiles is not automatically more visibility. Now let's talk about when a separate doctor listing can actually make sense. A practitioner listing can be helpful when the doctor is a real standalone brand. In other words, people search their name specifically and that name carries demand. Think referrals, word of mouth, or people moving into town and searching a specific provider they were told to see. It can also make sense when a doctor truly practices at more than one location, or when a practice has multiple providers who are commonly searched by name and there is enough operational capacity to maintain those listings accurately. The key phrase there is maintain accurately. Because if you create practitioner listings, you now have more profiles that need ongoing attention. Hours, holidays, photos, posts, review responses, and overall accuracy. If you do not have a plan to keep those updated, that is when listings go stale. And stale listings create confusion and lost trust. Also, and this is important, the goal should never be to double rank by trying to get two pins at the same address. That approach is risky, very, very risky. Even if it works temporarily, it can create duplicates, verification headaches, and it often backfires later, especially when staff changes happen. And this is where I want to zoom out for a second and talk about what I recommend for most practices. For most practices, the cleanest setup is one strong location listing per real physical location. Then you use your website to do the heavy lifting for doctor name searches. That means having a solid team page and individual bio pages for each provider. Those bio pages should be easy to find, clearly written, and internally linked to the services that provider is known for. If someone searches Dr. Smith Chiropractor or Dr. Smith Acupuncture, you want Google to be able to connect the dots to your website, your location listing, and that provider's biopage. This approach keeps your reviews consolidated on the location listing, which is usually the most powerful asset for local visibility while still giving you a way to show up for branded provider searches. It also prevents one of the most annoying situations that happens when practices create or inherit practitioner listings. Remember that scenario I teased at the beginning? A doctor works at your location, they have their own listing, then they leave, but their listing is still showing your practice address? That is not just an inconvenience, it can become a real business problem. Patients call asking for a provider who is no longer there. Reviews end up on the wrong profile. Google starts to see mixed signals about who is actually at that address. And if there are multiple listings floating around, it can reduce the clarity and strength of your main location listing. This is one of the reasons I do not treat practitioner listings as a default move. They can be helpful in the right situation, but they can also outlive your relationship with the provider. And then you are the one dealing with the fallout. So let's talk about what to do if that is happening to you. First, clean up your own signals because Google learns from what it sees across the web. If your website still shows that doctor on a team page, or you still have an old bio page live, or they are still mentioned on service pages, Google may keep associating that provider with your address. So step one is to remove or update those references. Update your team page, remove or redirect old bio pages as appropriate. Make sure your about content reflects current providers. Then do a quick scan of major directories where your practice is listed and see if that doctor is still tied to your address there. The goal is to stop feeding Google the story that this provider is still at your location. Second, go to the doctor listing on Google Maps and use suggest and edit. You are trying to correct the address association. If you know where they moved, suggesting a move can be the cleanest path. If you do not know where they moved, you can still indicate that the listing does not belong at that address. Third, while that cleanup is in progress, protect your main listing. Make sure your location Google Business Profile is updated, complete, and clearly reflects your current providers through photos, posts, and your website link. Make it easy for a patient to know they are in the right place with the right team. Now back to the bigger question: should you have both a doctor listing and a location listing? Here's my decision filter. If most of your searches are service-based, chiropractor near me, physical therapist in Boston, or acupuncture in Lucival, then the location listing should be your priority. Consolidate reviews there, build it up, keep it active. That is going to be the strongest and simplest setup for most practices. If you have strong provider name searches, multiple providers with real branded demand, and you have a clear plan to maintain individual profiles, then a practitioner listing might be worth considering. But even then, I want you to think like a systems person. What happens when a provider changes hours? What happens when they go on leave? What happens when they leave the practice? Who updates what and how quickly? Because the benefit of a practitioner listing is not worth it if it creates confusion, splits reviews, or forces you into a cleanup project later. If you do decide that a practitioner listing is truly the right move, keep it clean. Make sure it is obviously the practitioner's name, not a second version of your practice name. Link it to the doctor's bio page on your website, not just the home page. Use a phone number that is actually answered. Keep the hours accurate and avoid creating duplicates if one already exists. And if you are not sure, default to one strong location profile and better provider pages on your website. It is often the safer, more stable path that still helps you show up for the searches you care about. Before I wrap up, here is the takeaway I want you to remember. Google Business Profile Visibility is not about having the most listings. It is about being the clearest, most trustworthy answer for the searcher. Clarity wins. So if your setup today is messy or you are dealing with a former provider's listing still attached to your address, do not panic. Clean up the signals, correct what you can, and strengthen the listing you actually want to rank. If you want help figuring out what you should do in your exact situation, especially if you suspect duplicates or you are dealing with a provider listing that will not detach from your address, that is one of those cases where a quick review can save you a lot of time and frustration. Thanks for listening to the Clinic Marketing Podcast. If this episode helped you, please share it with a colleague or a practice owner friend who's trying to clean up their Google Business Profile setup. And if you've got a quick minute, leaving a review is one of the biggest ways you can support the show. It helps more clinic owners find these episodes and it tells me what topics you want more of.