Can you have multiple physician listings if they work in different cities/locations?

[Santi1077]

Hello SEO family,

Backstory: Im currently doing some local seo for a medical practice in the Houston, tx area. They have gmb listings for their locations but also have listings for their physicians who work for them as well.

Here's the question: Can a physician have different "physician listings" if say they work in the Houston location but also work at the austin location? At a glance this seems spammy to me but would love and appreciate any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

 

[cfazio]

I manage a few GMB for medical clinics - they did not have any "practitioner" listings when I started and I personally chose not to add any.

Can be a hassle when a physician gets a new job and removing their GMB listings. Also it makes it harder for your main GMB to rank. I really wanted to do it, but seemed like more trouble than its worth.

Logically it makes sense, your main clinic has a specific primary category, your practitioners listings have different more specific categories that they can rank for.

I read this whitespark article a while ago that should be able to answer your question.

I believe you would want to link the practitioner listing to their specific bio page on the main site.

TLDR; yes, yes you can.

 

[freerunr]

I read this whitespark article a while ago that should be able to answer your question.

I believe you would want to link the practitioner listing to their specific bio page on the main site.

TLDR; yes, yes you can.

@whitespark Do you recall if this direction was based on something Google or a PE said, or testing? I noticed the guidelines currently indicate "A practitioner shouldn't have multiple Business Profiles to cover all of their specializations." But it doesn't speak of having multiple profiles to cover their multiple locations. Just curious so I can be clear on this if I encounter it with a client

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Very confident that if they practice at different locations, they can have a GMB listing at each place but the days/hours must be set correctly with no overlap.

 

[freerunr]

Great -- thanks for confirming, @Yan Gilbert. Think Google would be open to spelling that out in the guidelines if you suggest it?

 

[Yan Gilbert]

There's are reasons they leave things vague sometimes. I very much doubt they will want their spam team to start cross referencing hours across listings. They can barely keep up as it is it seems.
I would make sure to have proof for each location with stated hours if possible in case someone reports the listing for duplicates though.