Should I Create Two Different Google Business Profiles

[vivekrpatel]

My client business phone number and address are the same. The Firm operates out of the same office and just has 2 divisions within it (Lemon Law + Personal Injury).

We have GBP for lemon law which has been running for the last 5 years.

 

[JS Girard]

I would avoid it. We've found that even aside from the validation difficulties and risk of suspension/merge, reviews tend to flow overwhelmingly to the better-established profile, which makes getting ranks and leads from the newer profile a challenge.

 

[vivekrpatel]

Hi @JS Girard thank you for sharing your feedback.

Do you suggest optimizing existing profile for both divisions?

 

[JS Girard]

You probably will not be ranking as well for whichever option is not used as a main category (because of the spring 2023 update which reduced the weighting of secondary categories), but in my opinion it's probably a better bet than a second vertical.

A typical situation we used tp encounter with the two GBPs optimized separately was the main GBP in top-10 and the secondary not even top-20. If you actively try to target both verticals and have a regular stream of reviews... well I'd still not bet the house on reaching top-3 for both, but you might get a pretty good position nonetheless. Also our cases were in health, and I've noticed that this separation is often less strong in law.

 

[vivekrpatel]

You probably will not be ranking as well for whichever option is not used as a main category (because of the spring 2023 update which reduced the weighting of secondary categories), but in my opinion it's probably a better bet than a second vertical.

A typical situation we used tp encounter with the two GBPs optimized separately was the main GBP in top-10 and the secondary not even top-20. If you actively try to target both verticals and have a regular stream of reviews... well I'd still not bet the house on reaching top-3 for both, but you might get a pretty good position nonetheless. Also our cases were in health, and I've noticed that this separation is often less strong in law.

You're right about how main and secondary categories affect rankings, especially after the spring 2023 update. It might be hard to get into the top 3 for both, but if we work on both and get lots of good reviews, we can still do well. It's interesting that in the legal field, this separation isn't as strong. We should look into it more.

Thanks for your thoughts.