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Are Extra Google Listings Hurting Your Rankings?
More Google listings mean more traffic, right? Not so fast. What if I told you those extra listings might be killing your traffic instead of helping it?
That’s exactly what happened to an orthodontist we worked with. At first, we thought his multiple listings were an asset. But as his rankings kept dropping, we uncovered a surprising truth.
The Problem With Multiple Google Business Profiles
This orthodontist had one main Google Business Profile for his practice and separate listings for individual practitioners. Sounds logical, doesn’t it?
Here’s a different example of how that often looks:
- Practice Listing:
- Practitioner Listing:
The problem was that Google’s ranking filter saw these as competing listings. Both were visible, but their rankings were low. The practice listing ranked in position 6 and the practitioner listing ranked in position 10. Neither were in the top 3 spots of the local pack.
Google’s Ranking Filter Isn’t What You Think
You may know Google has a filter to prevent duplicate listings from appearing in search results. What you might not realize is how this filter works.
Think of these extra listings as a weight dragging your main profile down. They aren’t just filtered—they’re like a penalty that affects your rankings.
Here’s what we did: We deleted the practitioner listing.
The Results: A Game-Changing Boost
The results were incredible. Before deleting the extra listing, the practice was stuck at position 6. Once the practitioner listing was removed, the rankings soared—and so did the traffic.
How to Tell If You Have Duplicate Google Listing Issues
Wondering if this is happening to your business? It’s more common than you think. If you notice:
- Your rankings aren’t improving despite strong reviews and optimized content.
- You have multiple listings for the same practice, including practitioner profiles.
You may be competing with yourself.
Extra Google listings might seem helpful, but if they’re not benefiting your rankings, they’re likely hurting them. Removing duplicates could be the key to unlocking better visibility and more traffic for your business.
Have you dealt with duplicate listings? Share your story in the comments—we’d love to hear how it impacted your business.
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Some (most?) practitioner listings appear without the doctor even knowing. Same address with same primary category will de-rank both but the one with more reviews will generally rank higher (pretty sure that’s what Sterling Sky has said before). For this specific scenario, would the business risk changing their primary category from dentist to dental clinic (which GMBSpy isn’t showing as a category on this listing), moving dentist to secondary category and keep the practitioner listing (if they still wanted their listing up) with the primary category of dentist?
I looked at a few dentist listings (dental clinics) and I saw several with several practitioner listings at the same address with the same primary category.
What a find!
In my experience, the only categories in the dental space that are unique enough to optimize a practitioner listing for are “emergency dental service” and “pediatric dentist”. Any other dental category, including “dental clinic”, is too similar to “dentist” and will likely still cause filtering issues. So if they want to keep the practitioner listing up, I recommend using one of those as primary categories and leaving “dentist” off completely, if that is the PC for the main listing.
Some (most?) practitioner listings appear without the doctor even knowing. Same address with same primary category will de-rank both but the one with more reviews will generally rank higher (pretty sure that’s what Sterling Sky has said before). For this specific scenario, would the business risk changing their primary category from dentist to dental clinic (which GMBSpy isn’t showing as a category on this listing), moving dentist to secondary category and keep the practitioner listing (if they still wanted their listing up) with the primary category of dentist?
I looked at a few dentist listings (dental clinics) and I saw several with several practitioner listings at the same address with the same primary category.
What a find!
In my experience, the only categories in the dental space that are unique enough to optimize a practitioner listing for are “emergency dental service” and “pediatric dentist”. Any other dental category, including “dental clinic”, is too similar to “dentist” and will likely still cause filtering issues. So if they want to keep the practitioner listing up, I recommend using one of those as primary categories and leaving “dentist” off completely, if that is the PC for the main listing.
Very interesting, but did you guys look at many other examples? It may be worth a deep dive.
I did a quick look at “dentist near me” and #1-3 all had practitioner listings. #4-5 had no practitioner listing, and #4 being the closest one to me. #6 also had at least one practitioner listing. I did not look closer at other factors.
We have looked into this for a bunch of different businesses.
Very interesting, but did you guys look at many other examples? It may be worth a deep dive.
I did a quick look at “dentist near me” and #1-3 all had practitioner listings. #4-5 had no practitioner listing, and #4 being the closest one to me. #6 also had at least one practitioner listing. I did not look closer at other factors.
We have looked into this for a bunch of different businesses.
WOW, thanks for the detailed case study and explaining the nuances of practitioner listings on Google so well. I agree, the key is to have legitimate and unique service offerings for each of the practitioners, and make that distinction clear on the website and offsite.
Gettings reviews to all of those listings is also extremely important, and needs to be factored in as with any multiple GBP strategy.