Our GBP now showing with the business name search

[trhee]

Hello everyone,

We have been dealing with this GBP visibility issue for a while and worked with several SEO companies to rectify this without much success. I was wondering if I can get insight from other professionals on this. Any insight/idea would be so much appreciated!

Our original business (Glow Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics) - started with one GBP and one website. Over the first few months, we realized that having both the 'Pediatric Dentistry' and 'Orthodontics' in one name caused confusion for our customers, and tried our best to separate them out into two different businesses (Glow Pediatric Dentistry Langley and Glow Orthodontics Langley). Each business has different website, phone numbers and addresses (different retail unit number).

The original GBP under Glow Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics had a few more reviews for Pediatric Dentistry side - so that original GBP was converted into Glow Pediatric Dentistry Langley. The original website was also converted into the pediatric dentistry one.

A new website and GBP was created for the orthodontics side - Glow Orthodontics Langley. Other than the overall visibility issue for our orthodontics GBP, the main issue comes from the fact that when 'Glow Orthodontics Langley' is searched on google, an incorrect GBP shows up - Glow Pediatric Dentistry Langley (formerly Glow Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics). The correct GBP that we want to show on google, at least when the exact business name 'Glow Orthodontics Langley', is the following - which has the exact phrase as the business name.
(Glow Orthodontics Langley - Google Search).

We have been reassured by our current SEO company that, as the keyword ranks and visibility improves for Glow Orthodontics Langley - this GBP issue for the exact business name search should also resolve on its own. But this has been going on for a couple years now without any improvement. We're so desparate to a point where we're thinking about asking google to merge the GBPs again, even if it means we're going back to the starting point... We're also wondering if there is something wrong with the GBP setup that is causing this issue, and we have removed/edited any 'orthodontics' related keywords and content from the 'pediatric dentistry' website and GBP all together. The only thing that the Glow Orthodontics Langley GBP and Glow Pediatric Dentistry Langley GBP shares now is the name 'glow' which is our brand name.

Thank you for reaching this far and please share your wisdom with us to help solve this GBP visibility issue for our business name search for Glow Orthodontics Langley!

 

[Orlando Sydney]

So now there's two similar (same vertical) businesses at the same address? might be an impact. Hopefully others can add some info for you

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi @trhee, the bottom line is that one of your GBP profiles are being filtered, you can read more about that here:

Is Your Google My Business Listing Getting Filtered? - Sterling Sky Inc

This article is part 1 of 9 from my LocalU presentation from March 2020. If you missed the event, the videos are available for purchase here. The local filter has existed for a long time but became much more obvious after the Possum algorithm update in 2016. The local filter is kind of like…

www.sterlingsky.ca

There are sometimes workarounds to getting both similar businesses to show up, but in your case I think you've got some obstacles that will prevent that from happening. Looking at your online presence there are several issues you've got going on:

1. Are they legally two different businesses or did you just create two different websites and two different named Google Business profiles?
2. You have two different mailing addresses, but are they operating under the same roof or in physically separate offices? Google doesn't really care about Suite #'s, Unit #'s, or Mail Drop boxes.
3. The citations out there for the original name, and the two alternate names are all over the place, including the address being used. For example, your Facebook info has "Glow Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry".

If you could reply back with further clarification on #1 and #2, that would be helpful.

Thanks!

 

[trhee]

Thank you for your reply

Hi @trhee, the bottom line is that one of your GBP profiles are being filtered, you can read more about that here:

Is Your Google My Business Listing Getting Filtered? - Sterling Sky Inc

This article is part 1 of 9 from my LocalU presentation from March 2020. If you missed the event, the videos are available for purchase here. The local filter has existed for a long time but became much more obvious after the Possum algorithm update in 2016. The local filter is kind of like…

www.sterlingsky.ca

There are sometimes workarounds to getting both similar businesses to show up, but in your case I think you've got some obstacles that will prevent that from happening. Looking at your online presence there are several issues you've got going on:

1. Are they legally two different businesses or did you just create two different websites and two different named Google Business profiles?
2. You have two different mailing addresses, but are they operating under the same roof or in physically separate offices? Google doesn't really care about Suite #'s, Unit #'s, or Mail Drop boxes.
3. The citations out there for the original name, and the two alternate names are all over the place, including the address being used. For example, your Facebook info has "Glow Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry".

If you could reply back with further clarification on #1 and #2, that would be helpful.

Thanks!

Thank you for your reply Jeff,

I had a chance to review the article that you linked, and it does seem like our GBP for Glow Orthodontics Langley is being filtered.

1. Yes. Glow Pediatric Dentistry Langley and Glow Orthodontics Langley are two different businesses. We have different incorporations, business licenses, websites, phone numbers, etc
2. We're physically separate offices - we share a reception area, but different physical clinical spaces within the office.
3. We've been trying to clean up the citations that shared both names in the past - still a work in progress. Upon reviewing your answer, we've also changed the facebook and other social media names to not incorporate both orthodontics and pediatric dentistry together.

Based on the article, it seems like we just need to keep building authorities for the branded keyword 'Glow Orthodontics Langley' - or do you think we should get in touch with google 'somehow' and get this unfiltered?

Kind regards,

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Glad to hear that you are operating as legally separate businesses in their own office space, that would pretty much be a deal-breaker if you weren't.

On the citation side, including FB, you need to have a totally separate citation campaign for both businesses. I'd suggest using Brightlocal or Whitespark's services to assist you quickly with the citations and correcting the existing ones. You are going to have to do some manual work to get some of the more important local citations corrected. For example, your Chamber of Commerce listing has the right name but the category is set to Dental. FB should have one business page for the pediatric dentistry office with the same info and name as your GBP, and then a totally separate FB page for the orthodontics with the same info as its GBP. By having only one FB page with a name that is different than either business, but sharing the same address and phone number of only one of the businesses, is not going to help matters. While you changed the name, you've still got links to both business' websites. If these are totally separate businesses, you need to be doing this across the board with all your online efforts or it will be very difficult to get the ortho profile unfiltered.

Also, you may want to consider reducing the number of categories on your pediatric dentistry GBP. For the orthodontics GBP you only are using "orthodontics" as your sole category which is good, but the dentistry GBP has lots of categories, some of which may be too similar to "orthodontics" such as "cosmetic dentistry" that is contributing to the filter.

The age of a GBP can be a factor on whether a business got filtered or not, and this is probably still a factor in your case. You need to continue updating your ortho GBP with regular photos, reviews, posts, etc.

Simply put, you're going to have to put in more effort to convince Google. Right now the ortho practice is not ranking organically for "orthodontist langley bc" which has a high correlation to how Google perceives this business.

 

[trhee]

Glad to hear that you are operating as legally separate businesses in their own office space, that would pretty much be a deal-breaker if you weren't.

On the citation side, including FB, you need to have a totally separate citation campaign for both businesses. I'd suggest using Brightlocal or Whitespark's services to assist you quickly with the citations and correcting the existing ones. You are going to have to do some manual work to get some of the more important local citations corrected. For example, your Chamber of Commerce listing has the right name but the category is set to Dental. FB should have one business page for the pediatric dentistry office with the same info and name as your GBP, and then a totally separate FB page for the orthodontics with the same info as its GBP. By having only one FB page with a name that is different than either business, but sharing the same address and phone number of only one of the businesses, is not going to help matters. While you changed the name, you've still got links to both business' websites. If these are totally separate businesses, you need to be doing this across the board with all your online efforts or it will be very difficult to get the ortho profile unfiltered.

Also, you may want to consider reducing the number of categories on your pediatric dentistry GBP. For the orthodontics GBP you only are using "orthodontics" as your sole category which is good, but the dentistry GBP has lots of categories, some of which may be too similar to "orthodontics" such as "cosmetic dentistry" that is contributing to the filter.

The age of a GBP can be a factor on whether a business got filtered or not, and this is probably still a factor in your case. You need to continue updating your ortho GBP with regular photos, reviews, posts, etc.

Simply put, you're going to have to put in more effort to convince Google. Right now the ortho practice is not ranking organically for "orthodontist langley bc" which has a high correlation to how Google perceives this business.

Thank you so much for your candid advice. This makes much more sense - as it suggests that there's still lots of clean up to do - which we can make a meaningful effort on.
We were afraid that the 'age' of the pediatric dentistry side GBP and the initial set up might make this impossible, but it seems like there's hope.
Thank you again for your amazing advice! We will get to work.