Practioner help - naming convention and eligibility

[Lloyd Silver]

Could of questions regarding practioner listings.

Are they limited to certain professions or any business where individuals represent themselves to the public in addition to the business. For example, mortgage brokers and insurance agents who are 1099 sales people but work at an agency similar to realtors.

And then, is there a naming convention best practice for the practioner listings. For example, should they include the name of the business. For example, ABC Mortgage Brokers - John Smith.

Thanks

 

[Lloyd Silver]

Here's a follow up question. If we used the name of their firm and their name have we used up the descriptor?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Could of questions regarding practioner listings.

Are they limited to certain professions or any business where individuals represent themselves to the public in addition to the business. For example, mortgage brokers and insurance agents who are 1099 sales people but work at an agency similar to realtors.

And then, is there a naming convention best practice for the practioner listings. For example, should they include the name of the business. For example, ABC Mortgage Brokers - John Smith.

There is some gray area - I know Realtors and insurance agents.

I assume mortgage brokers and maybe accountants IF they are listed lots of places individually.

But keep in mind - NORMALLY you are hired by the owner and if so, then you don't want to create practitioner listings that will compete with the main listing and if Google creates them you want to minimize them.

Name - again depends who you are working for. If working for the main company then you only want the practitioner's name so it won't compete. Otherwise they'd end up with a single agent in the pack that knocks out the main listing.

Plus having business name on all the agent listings CAN contribute to merging, although merges don't come up as a problem that often any more.

Here's a follow up question. If we used the name of their firm and their name have we used up the descriptor?

I read a comment from a RER that actually busts local listings AND approves MM edits that yes it's a descriptor. But I'd say that's only the case if the main listing name had KW in it.

So Alpine Services: John Smith - could have a descriptor (IMO)
But Alpine Insurance: John Smith - maybe not (Again must IMO)

But I'm just guessing and again some of this can be pretty gray and know for sure what Google, the algo or a RER would think. And to be honest each of them could have a slightly different take and answers could vary depending on the specific example.

 

[Lloyd Silver]

In this case, the client is the owner of the location and isn't happy that two of his brokers have listings and his doesn't show. And he'd prefer if people called him, not others, since he personally makes more. It's a weird issue.

But I was always trying to understand it better in a general sense.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Linda Buquet]

If that's the situation it seems he could just have a rule that agents can't use the company name.

So for example for Drs it's clearly better to have name only for a variety of reasons. And partly because it's not like the indiv Drs are out there selling and trying to get their own pts.

But you could tell him and he could tell them that when there are multiple practitioners Google prefers one brand and practitioners listed by name only. OR if they did name only they could also add a descriptor.

But different with Realtors and Ins agents because they want to associate with the Coldwell Banker or Allstate brand so if someone is searching for that specific agency or brand they come up.

It's done in the affiliate marketing world all the time with PPC. Where Sports Authority has an affiliate program and one of the rules is, you can bid on all the keywords you want but you can't bid on the Sports Authority brand name.

 

[Lloyd Silver]

Unfortunately there is some brand recognition and the individual brokers like to use the brand name. And it's been going on for so long I don't think there's a way of controlling it now from a policy perspective.

Off Google but related, can practitioners have their own citations in most cases? Or yelp page?

This really gets things complicated, as you know : )