Do practitioner listings for the same business need to have different categories?
-
I'm trying to figure out an issue with practitioner listings, and I wanted to ask more about this because in this Q&A thread ( http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-businesses-at-the-same-address-avoiding-google-places-trouble ) it was stated that each listing needs to have a different category.
Sorry if this question is redundant, I just wanted to make sure I have a clear understanding before proceeding....
I'm managing local listings for a senior healthcare center that has 4 locations, and multiple practitioners at each location. I'm trying to figure out how to best handle the multiple practitioner listings, most of which appear to be scraped. I was going to claim, verify and begin managing them.
However, they all fall under the same category, "practitioner." What I've gathered from the response in the above Q&A thread is that I need to have a different category for each practitioner to please Google Places, despite the fact that "practitioner" is the best/most accurate category available in Google's pre-set categories.
Is my interpretation correct?
I'm confused because Google's guidelines say you can create a separate listing for each practitioner, which to me implies that it would be ok to use the practitioner category for each one. But then again, I want to make sure before proceeding.
Thanks,
Kim
#TECHSEO Account Manager -
Hi Kim,
So far as I know, neither Bing nor Yahoo has ever taken a public position on this subject. You could try live chat with Bing here to ask about it:
http://www.bing.com/businessportal
But, I have some doubts as to whether they will be able to quote you a rule on this. I've never seen one.
These are Yahoo's guidelines, but they make no mention of this factor:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ll/guidelines/local-01.html
Miriam
-
One more thing I just thought of... Do these same rules apply to Yahoo and Bing local listings, or just Google?
Thanks again!
Kim
-
One more thing I just thought of... Do these same rules apply to Yahoo and Bing local listings, or just Google?
Thanks again!
Kim
-
So glad to be of help, Kim. Thanks for using Q&A!
-
Yes, these materials were very helpful and informative, thank you!
Another part of my issue was wondering how to handle scraped practitioner duplicates that were already in existence, but I was able to find a couple options on how to handle that in the resources you recommended.
Best!
Kim
-
Hi Kim,
So glad you came here to ask this question.
Yes, it has been standard best practice to ascribe unique categories to each practitioner within a practice, however, things got really wacky with Google's new behavior towards businesses like doctors, dentists and lawyers. Let me link to some resources here that I think are must-read for anyone dealing with this type of business:
http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-duplicates-doctor-dentist-lawyer.html
Note in the above Google's announcement that they will no longer delete duplicate listings for doctors and the advice to mark them as 'permanently closed'. However, also note, that since Linda Buquet wrote the above post, Google changed the 'permanently closed' message so that it reads, "This Places Has Closed or Relocated". So that's a bit different.
Next, read this other post about Linda Buquet's experiment with managing to get a duplicate doctor listing removed:
I recommend you read the initial post and all follow-up posts on the above thread.
These days, because of the issues with exactly this scenario, there is no way I would recommend that a new multi-partner practice set up a listing for each practitioner. I would simply set up a listing for each location and forget about listing the individual partners. Hope the materials I've linked to will help you understand the latest issues with this complex scenario.
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
-
Search results performance affected by similarly named Adult business?!
Hey This is an unusual one I guess and one we've scratched our heads on for ages without reaching any definitive answer, so would be very grateful to the Moz community for some thought and guidance! Client website: https://www.themassagerooms.com This is a professionally run, therapeutic health business offering on-demand ("mobile", ie visiting customers at their homes) massage service. Importantly, please note again (you'll see why in a minute) the exact URL and the fact that this business, our client, is a registered therapeutic health and wellness business (ie it is genuine, real, massage services). The business has been around for about 10 years and used to rank very highly for many dream keywords for their industry. However, several years ago they got approached by a domain reseller offer to sell them "massagerooms.com" (ie the same name but without the "The" at the beginning) for a few thousand pounds. They rejected the offer. Interesting Aside: This happened a short while before the Facebook movie was launched ... if they'd seen that movie perhaps they would have accepted! (Facebook was originally called The Facebook but then one of the key investors advised them to drop the "The"! Anyway, unfortunately for them, that offered domain name (massagerooms.com) was then sold to an online adult video services company. Soon after, themassagerooms.com rankings started to suffer. Today, TheMassageRooms.com have a technically very clean site (great scores on Google LightSpeed etc), with regularly updated relevant health and wellness content. They are doing ok in terms of rankings but no where near as well as many of their competitors who on the face of it seem to have significantly worse on and off-page scores as well as many spammy links. Also, TheMassageRooms.com have a much better Moz DA then those competitors that are ranking better. The big question is whether the existence of an adult services website, MassageRooms.com with such a similar name is causing them issues in search results? Especially since many people (regular customers and even their own staff), do search for TheMassageRooms (ie the therapeutic health and wellness company) by only typing "massage rooms". So, there is a clear argument for saying "The Massage Rooms" = "Massage Rooms" in many respects, even through the two URLs which match these exact terms lead to very different businesses. Of course, one solution, might be to change the URL and 301 redirect everything. But would that actually make a difference if the actual issue is that Google's algorithm is somehow connected "MassageRooms.com" (adult site) with "TheMassageRooms.com" (our client's health and wellness site). Also it seems a bit drastic to ask them to change a 10 year established brand name etc.
Algorithm Updates | | AmerTMR0 -
Need to be reindexed quickly - SERP is showing a 404
So there was a mistake made where a 404 error was placed in the canonical URL for the pages my company made. We need to have these pages quickly reindexed. I asked GWT to fetch them and have an updated sitemap but the SERPs are still the same. Any tricks anyone knows that would allow me to get reindexed faster?
Algorithm Updates | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Getting listed in the Google local result - help!
Good day, I'm really struggling to get a client to appear in the Google Local map snapshot (on the right of the SERPs), even when their company name is Googled. I've tried everything including getting the main Google Local account verified, had some reviews put up, all the required and relevant info has been completed, yet their location and the map never appear. Any help out there as to how I can remedy this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Martin_S1 -
SERP's & Search Engine Differences
Hey, I recently modified my pages to conform more closely to the "A" page rankings for MOZ's on-page report card but saw declines in my keyword rankings. They keywords in question appear in my title tag, description, one image alt tag, either an h1 or h2 tag, and 4 times throughout the text of the document. I don't think MOZ would recommend these changes if it was seen as stuffing - is there any other reason why my rankings might have dropped by 1-4 positions? Also, does anyone know of a good article/book for Yahoo/Bing SEO? My Yahoo & Bing rankings are far below Google's in most cases. Any help would be appreciated! -Michael
Algorithm Updates | | Stew2220 -
Is it still possible for small businesses to rank well in google
Hi I've been playing around with ecommerce sites for a few years now and although I am no expert I'm not a complete novice. We used to do quite well in google but recent changes have halved our number of hits. I have noticed that over the last year google has given priority to large brand names as opposed to relevancy. For example, if you search for the term 'bridal jewellery' (google UK) you will see that apart from one or two the majority of placements are taken by big compnies who offer very little bridal jewellery. One or two pages at most. My question is, is it still possible to rank well against these brand names or has google made it impossible for small companies. PS we only practice ethical seo as suggested by seomoz. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks www.kerryblu.co.uk
Algorithm Updates | | Dill0 -
Why is map listing split this way ?
I am trying to figure out why map listings gets split up this way. Some people gets their maplisting to the right while the generic map listing block is down after a few organic listings . Didn't they at some point of time club orgainc + map together so only one shows up in SERPs ? q2Foz.png
Algorithm Updates | | Saijo.George0 -
Google.ca English and French returning different rankings
French Keyword : "Chauffage électrique" Currently Ranking 4th on Google.ca (French) It is not even top 50 on Google.ca (English) Why so much gap between them? Both are on Google.ca, just different language. Also, when searching the keyword on Google.ca (English), all the results shown are in french anyway ! Why is mine way off ? How can I help the ranking on the EN version? Why does Google.ca FR and EN have different rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | Kezber0 -
Is there a way to know what rank my site is listed on google ?
My current client web page was listed at the 4th page 1 month ago. Im trying real hard to make him understand that the traffic from beiing on the first page is important and that he need to give me additionnal ressource to make it happen ( i don't prog at all). So i had the idea of checking every page to see whats is current rank. but instead of looking from page 1 to page X, i was wondering if there was something somewhere that could give me my rank right away. It woud help saving time. Thx.
Algorithm Updates | | Promoteam0