General Dentist and Sleep Apnea/TMJ Specialist - two distinct businesses, same location

[Tony Wang]

I have a general dentist that also has a separate practice only for sleep apnea & TMJ. The two offices are at separate locations. He is planning to move to a new location and bring both to the same new office, while keeping the business practices separate.

Independent Sleep and TMJ practices are common, and often use the GBP categories of Medical Office and/or sleep clinic, since they bill under health insurance, not dental. However, many dentists also do sleep and tmj as part of their general practice, so I'm worried that Google may associate them as being in the same industry.

Does anyone have experience with having two separate practices being at the same address? I'm worried about one of them getting filtered. Both have strong and established profiles.

 

[keyserholiday]

I have a general dentist that also has a separate practice only for sleep apnea & TMJ. The two offices are at separate locations. He is planning to move to a new location and bring both to the same new office, while keeping the business practices separate.

Independent Sleep and TMJ practices are common, and often use the GBP categories of Medical Office and/or sleep clinic, since they bill under health insurance, not dental. However, many dentists also do sleep and tmj as part of their general practice, so I'm worried that Google may associate them as being in the same industry.

Does anyone have experience with having two separate practices being at the same address? I'm worried about one of them getting filtered. Both have strong and established profiles.

They won't get filtered as they will have different categories. The issue is, can you prove to Google that they are two different offices with different staff? When you move the GBPs, Google will make you complete the video verification for both GBPs. You will need to show signage for both GBPs.

 

[Stefan Somborac]

@Tony Wang - 1.) I just worked with a dental office that ran regular, 9 - 5 type office hours and sublet the space to a dentist who ran an emergency dental service at the location in the off hours. The emergency clinic profile got suspended. We were able to get it reinstated by showing that they were in fact two different businesses. (As opposed to one business trying to bend the rules by claiming two profiles.) We did that with:

• Signage for both businesses at the office door
• Each business had its own LLC
• Unique websites and phone numbers (We were able to use the phone bill for the emergency clinic as part of our submission)

2.) In another case, I helped a restaurant owner whose profile was marked as a duplicate of the bar next door. They were side-by-side, so they had different addresses. (e.g. 2 Main St, 4 Main St.) They had different primary categories. (e.g. bar, restaurant) They were in a tourist town and both used the city name in their rather generic GBP names. (e.g. Toronto Bar, Toronto Restaurant)

Google's algorithm to merge profiles can be pretty aggressive!

All that two say: Make efforts to keep the two businesses different enough so they won't get automatically merged and be prepared in case one of them gets suspended!