Best Way to Remove a Practitioner Listing

[Fiera24]

I have an organization listing and multiple practitioner listings, but I'd like to remove some of the currently not ranking practitioners to focus on org. What is the best way to "remove" the practitioner listing from GMB? Could this be marked duplicate of org or merged with org listing?

 

[Phil Rozek]

You'll probably want to merge it into the org listing (Google willing). If you go that route, around the same time you'll want to clean up the citations (delete or update or some combination) as much as possible, so Google is less likely just to auto-generate another practitioner GMB page.

For other ins and outs, you'll want to follow Joy's advice here:

https://whitespark.ca/blog/best-practices-for-practitioner-listings-on-google-my-business-gmb/
And perhaps here: The Proper Way To Deal with Duplicates in Google My Business [2020 Edition]

 

[Adam Bament]

I've been trying to get Google to merge my organisational GMB with a departed practitioner's GMB for about 6 months. Google has explicitly told me this cannot happen as the practitioner "owns" their GMB, not the business.

As I'm the GMB admin for both profiles, Google suggested marking the practitioner's GMB as 'perm closed' - the obvious problem being that when the practitioner's GMB shows up in search, people are likely to take this as my business is perm closed.

I've simply decided to remove most content (images, posts, website etc) from the old practitioners GMB, not 'review updates' and essentially let this GMB profile decay so Google doesn't serve it up in search. Fingers crossed...

 

[JoyHawkins]

I've been trying to get Google to merge my organisational GMB with a departed practitioner's GMB for about 6 months. Google has explicitly told me this cannot happen as the practitioner "owns" their GMB, not the business.

This is correct. If the practitioner no longer works there because they retired or are deceased, at that point, you can get the listing removed.

The best way to keep it from conflicting with the practice listing is to use a single, more generic, category on the listing. For example, something like "doctor" or "lawyer" instead of the specific type of practitioner they are.

 

[Brian.Herod]

I've been trying to get Google to merge my organisational GMB with a departed practitioner's GMB for about 6 months. Google has explicitly told me this cannot happen as the practitioner "owns" their GMB, not the business.

As I'm the GMB admin for both profiles, Google suggested marking the practitioner's GMB as 'perm closed' - the obvious problem being that when the practitioner's GMB shows up in search, people are likely to take this as my business is perm closed.

I've simply decided to remove most content (images, posts, website etc) from the old practitioners GMB, not 'review updates' and essentially let this GMB profile decay so Google doesn't serve it up in search. Fingers crossed...

I've been trying to get Google to merge my organisational GMB with a departed practitioner's GMB for about 6 months. Google has explicitly told me this cannot happen as the practitioner "owns" their GMB, not the business.

As I'm the GMB admin for both profiles, Google suggested marking the practitioner's GMB as 'perm closed' - the obvious problem being that when the practitioner's GMB shows up in search, people are likely to take this as my business is perm closed.

I've simply decided to remove most content (images, posts, website etc) from the old practitioners GMB, not 'review updates' and essentially let this GMB profile decay so Google doesn't serve it up in search. Fingers crossed...

Hi Adam,
I know this was an older post, but how did this strategy work for you? I'm having the same issue with my dental practice. I basically want all practitioner gmb to disappear and only focus on the practice gmb. Thanks so much!

 

[Adam Bament]

Hi Brian,

I've had no luck at all with this. Google's only solution is to mark my practitioner listing as 'Permanently closed". I've just removed all content in the hope that the GMB profile in question isn't served up in SERPs.

Cheers,
Adam

 

[JoyHawkins]

@Brian.Herod do you multiple doctors at the location? If not, you should be able to get it merged.

 

[Brian.Herod]

HI Joy, we do have 3 doctors in one location so have been unable to merge. Ive tried permanently closing each, in hopes they would be filtered out. That didn't work. And eventually someone suggested an edit and the practitioner gmb was reopened.
MY goal is to only have the practice populate even if the provider is searched for specifically. Because that is where all the reviews are located. Any recommendations?

@Brian.Herod do you multiple doctors at the location? If not, you should be able to get it merged.

 

[JoyHawkins]

You wouldn't be able to make the main location show up when people search the doctor's names on Google. You should, however, be able to make it so the main location is the one that shows up for generic searches for your business category.