Hi, and THANK YOU! in advance for any input you give, its much appreciated.
We've been doing research on this and also wanted to see if the community could provide any more input.
We work with a plastic surgery clinic. The namesake of the surgery clinic is that of the first doctor:
- Practice Name: Gardner Plastic Surgery
- Plastic Surgeon 1: Dr. Gardner (we've worked with him since at least 2015)
- Plastic Surgeon 2: Dr. Baccaro (joined practice June 2018)
- Plastic Surgeon 3: Dr. Crespo (joining their practice starting Sept. 1 2020!)
To summarize our issues to date:
As we brought on our new surgeon Dr. Baccaro in 2018 we decided to ultimately claim his practitioner GMB listing, and to claim Dr. Gardner's (which had been unclaimed and we had to eliminate duplicates.) Before deciding to utilize the supplementary practitioner listings, we were managing/optimizing their main practice listing: Gardner Plastic Surgery. We continued to primarily/heavily optimize “Gardner Plastic Surgery” and mimicked the details for “Dr. Gardner” and “Dr. Baccaro”
From Dec. 2018 - Jan. 2020 we would from time to time notice that "Dr. Paul Gardner's" individual listing was showing up in Local Pack instead of "Gardner Plastic Surgery" but it was not really a big issue, happened very occasionally.
Around Dec. 2020 - Jan. 2020 we experienced some Google errors when trying to create Google Posts with videos--it resulted in a few very random and unexpected suspensions. We were posting appropriate content, it seemed that Google was struggling to process our video files from API and it would get stuck in a loop etc. All in all the suspensions happened, and we worked with Google many times to try to understand and stop that from happening. Fortunately that hasn't happened since (and we now don't post videos to Google posts because that was a bit too stressful. We still upload to main photo/video area)
Since February 2020 to present we have consistently noticed "Dr. Paul Gardner" appearing in place of the well-optimized full of photos/videos/posts "Gardner Plastic Surgery." We thought algorithm updates etc./COVID were all factors as to why doctors may be more prescient than a clinic. There were times where we thought it was fixed for sure, only for it to continue to crop up. Specifically we were trying to rank for the search term "naples plastic surgeon"
What We've Done So Far:
I've done a LOT of research and understand a number of errors we were overlooking from Q&As like this (duplicate categories/phone numbers):
- https://moz.com/community/q/gmb-page-for-law-not-ranking-but-individual-attorneys-names-are
- And: https://moz.com/community/q/partner-outranking-main-site-in-local
So I understand we have some decisions to make on the best path forward. We’re guilty of just about all of the issues Miriam elaborates on.
** As we move forward there are a few elements at play:**
- They are adding a new surgeon to the practice in September, we’re excited! Making a clear decision before he arrives is important
- With the addition of the 3<sup>rd</sup> surgeon “Gardner Plastic Surgery” is actually changing the name of its business to “Naples Plastic Surgery” as its much more suiting to the growing scope of practice.
** To end:**
Wow. I wrote a lot and really appreciate it if you stuck with me! Some thoughts I had that I wonder if anyone has insight on:
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Is the fact that “Gardner Plastic Surgery” is “Dr. Gardner’s” namesake a huge factor into why the individual doctor is popping up more often? He’s well known and his name and his business name have been around the internet for years longer than Dr. Baccaro etc.
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Do you think changing the name to “Naples Plastic Surgery” along with other needed updates could help address the issue?
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Could our string of unfortunate, though ultimately well-intentioned suspensions be part of what’s enabled “Dr. Paul Gardner” to prop up as well?
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Should we choose to heavily optimize all listings and see how diversifying categories etc. helps?
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Should we try to de-optimize and focus on practice profile for now as that’s our main listing?
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If you have any other recommendations, I’d love to hear them.
I think working on optimizing and diversifying our listings would be useful. Thank you again.
