Solo practitioner with two dental offices - Should the listings be merged?

[Creativedge]

I'm working with a dentist who owns two locations. He's the only dentist and moves between them.

Google currently has three listings; one for the dentist and one for each location.



My question is: Should I merge the practitioner listing with the corresponding location? Should both listings be named: Z Dentist: Ziad R. El-Hayek, DDS?

I haven't run into this case before and wasn't sure what the best practice is for this scenario.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

According to Google's guidelines yes a solo practitioner should only have one listing per location. So GMB support would be able to merge the practitioner listing into the appropriate practice listing.

The name format is "Practice Name: Dentist Name"

 

[Martin Briggs]

It might be worth asking the dentist if he will continue to be a solo practitioner. I just had a client with the same issue and we were planning on merging the practitioner and practice listing until we asked if another dentist would be joining in the near future and his answer was "very possibly".

Maybe Colan or someone else can shed some light on an appropriate time scale? What is near future? Can you hold off merging for a month? 3 months? A year?

 

[Creativedge]

That was one of my concerns as well, but I've been assured that there are no plans to add additional dentists to the practice. I always try to make certain this is the case before I recommend merging listings.

It might be interesting to know what the process is if we ever had a dentist who does decide to take someone on after the fact. Will Google My Business support split the listings? (I assume the reviews would stay with the practice, the practitioner name would come off and be used for a new listing...)

 

[Cherie Dickey]

It might be interesting to know what the process is if we ever had a dentist who does decide to take someone on after the fact. Will Google My Business support split the listings? (I assume the reviews would stay with the practice, the practitioner name would come off and be used for a new listing...)

In that case, if you wanted to have practitioner listings, they would need to be created by you or the Dr.... No need to call support. Jut create and verify the listings.

But when doing this, you would need to keep in mind that all but one of the listings could potentially be filtered from search, and the ones that show may not be the practice listing. You would also have reviews split across multiple listings, instead of concentrated on one fully optimized listing.

Personally, I really only would create multiples if each Dr had a different area of expertise. For example, the practice listing's category would be "Dentist", Dr A's "Cosmetic Dentist", and Dr B's "Orthodontist". If all Drs are general dentists, you'd only be creating competition with each other in Local/Maps search.