Dental Client - What Business Name To Use in NAP

[Travis Van Slooten]

I am working with a dental client and we're going to be doing some citations for him but I don't know what business name I should be using for his NAP. Here are the details:

*the name provided is fictitious but it provides a good enough example so you can advise accordingly.

Official DBA: Johnson Dental Implants and Oral Surgery

Places Page Says (in dashboard - upgraded dashboard): Johnson Dental Implants

Doing a search on Google for the two names above yields these results:

"Johnson Dental Implants and Oral Surgery" - 8,459 results
"Johnson Dental Implants" - 6,329 results

What should I be using as his official NAP on his site, Places page, and citations? If you say the longer version, which I'm leaning towards, should I make the change in his Places dashboard or just leave it as the shorter version?

Travis

 

[whitespark]

Hi Travis,

I'd suggest using the official DBA in citations for sure. As for the places page, I'm inclined to recommend changing that as well, but I'd prefer to get a second opinion from Linda.

What do you think Linda? Can he safely change the name in Places without killing his listing?


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[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Darren. Sorry Travis I looked at this earlier and was torn and could not decide.

Technically you are correct Darren, but need to weigh the potential risk of making a name change. Since the name is correct, just a shorter version I'm torn about rocking the boat if the listing has certain things going for it.

Kinda depends on a couple things. I do better when I can see a live listing, because there are things like current ranking and # of reviews that would play a part in my recommendation. So if you want to PM me a link I'll take a look. But I'll share my observations here, minus client name, so if anyone is following this thread and wants to see what I say they can.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Thanks guys!

@Linda - Their Places listing was bare. I just now uploaded all the photos and corrected the description, categories, hours, etc. It was a vacant, recently claimed listing. He has no reviews on the listing. However, he ranks consistently in the B or C position for "dental implants <city>" or "<city> dental implants" - and sometimes I've even seen him in the A position. He is no where to be found for just "dentist <city>" or "<city> dentist".

I should also point out there are no dupes, merges, etc. to be found. He just has the one "clean" listing that is obviously ranking pretty well.

If this still isn't enough information to give a solid recommendation, I'll dig up their Places listing and PM it to you Linda. Thanks!

Travis

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Linda:

Your thoughts on this? I'm just not sure what I should do with the Google+ Listing. My gut says it isn't broke so don't fix it (i.e. leave the shortened name as is) but use the long name on citations.

Travis

 

[Linda Buquet]

Ya the conservative side of me is with you, since that shorter part of name is correct and included in the longer version.

The risk is Google could scrape and create a dupe of the other name plus I don't think anyone but the engineers at G know for sure how picky the algo is about exact match of name for citations to count.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Thanks. I think I'll leave it for now and keep an eye on it. Obviously if we start getting dupes I will change to the longer name. I just hate to mess with it when it's doing so well "as-is." If there is one thing I've learned the past year working on G+ Local listings is that you can often times cause more problems trying to be "perfect" than if you just left well enough alone

Travis