Questions about Practitioner Listings

[dnp]

Hello everyone,

I have two questions regarding practitioner listings that I would appreciate your insight on:

1) We are working with a local hospital that has multiple clinics in the area. They recently hired a new doctor who previously worked at another hospital. His former employer had created and verified a GBP listing for him, but after he left, they removed themselves as the owners of the listing. The GBP now shows as unverified, but still displays the previous hospital's contact information and has a few 5-star reviews. Can we claim this abandoned listing and change the contact information on the profile? Or would it be better to create a brand new listing for him at his current clinic and contact GBP support to merge the two listings to keep the reviews?

2) Also, the clinic this doctor works at has a verified practice listing managed by someone else. Do we need to gain access to the practice's listing in order to properly verify and manage his individual practitioner listing? Or can we verify him independently without potential issues? We don't plan to claim their other doctors at this clinic at the moment, just this particular doctor as requested by the client.

Thanks in advance!

 

[JS Girard]

Hello everyone,

I have two questions regarding practitioner listings that I would appreciate your insight on:

1) We are working with a local hospital that has multiple clinics in the area. They recently hired a new doctor who previously worked at another hospital. His former employer had created and verified a GBP listing for him, but after he left, they removed themselves as the owners of the listing. The GBP now shows as unverified, but still displays the previous hospital's contact information and has a few 5-star reviews. Can we claim this abandoned listing and change the contact information on the profile? Or would it be better to create a brand new listing for him at his current clinic and contact GBP support to merge the two listings to keep the reviews?

Ideally you want to take the GBP for yourself, yes. GBP Age is a ranking factor, and not one that can be faked!

You could try updating via suggestions. You probably cannot take control of it directly using the old information, so you'd need to update that first. With no owner, the likelihood that such suggestions will be accepted is higher.

2) Also, the clinic this doctor works at has a verified practice listing managed by someone else. Do we need to gain access to the practice's listing in order to properly verify and manage his individual practitioner listing? Or can we verify him independently without potential issues? We don't plan to claim their other doctors at this clinic at the moment, just this particular doctor as requested by the client.

Thanks in advance!

You absolutely do NOT need access to the practice listing for this purpose specifically.

However, all the GBPs under the hospital's umbrella should probably have an overarching access of some sort that is connected to the hospital, piecemeal access through a bunch of different actors/managers for bits and bobs of such an ecosystem seems a recipe for unnecessary complications...

 

[dnp]

Thanks so much @JS Girard, I genuinely didn't know that a profile's age is a ranking factor! And I agree with you about centralizing all their GBP access. Unfortunately, it's just tough to get their higher-ups to approve the extra budget for us (third-party/marketing agency) to manage all their listings.

 

[JS Girard]

You could always put it as "setting up top-down access structure to prevent loss of control" (my bureaucratic buzzwords are rusty, sorry XD).

 

[dnp]

We'll try that one! XP

 

[JoyHawkins]

Totally agree with JS on this. I would also advise that you keep categories and the phone number different than the main practice listing if you don't have it in the same Google account. That will help Google wrongly marking it as a duplicate. Also, don't link the listing to the same page on the website as the practice listing.

 

[dnp]

Totally agree with JS on this. I would also advise that you keep categories and the phone number different than the main practice listing if you don't have it in the same Google account. That will help Google wrongly marking it as a duplicate. Also, don't link the listing to the same page on the website as the practice listing.

Thanks so much, Joy, for these tips!