Masked response
SEO competitor analysis for audiology practices
Who is answering instead of you
Your true position, measured against whatever is sitting above it.
Masked response
Your position against the result above it
audiologist near me
You at 4 · A two-audiologist independent, three miles north at 1 · Nobody holds it
A real gap. They have four times the reviews and a page for every clinician.
tinnitus treatment near me
You at 12 · A directory listing of nine local practices at 2 · A directory
Not a real competitor. A directory holds this because no practice in the market has written the page.
hearing aids near me
You at 9 · A national retailer with two warehouse locations at 1 · National retail
Not winnable this year, and not worth the budget. The device term belongs to retail.
balance testing near me
You at 7 · The hospital system's vestibular clinic at 3 · Hospital system
Winnable. The hospital page is one paragraph inside a department index.
ear wax removal near me
You at 15 · An urgent care chain at 1 · National retail
Losing an urgent, local, high-intent search to a business that does not specialise in ears.
The circle is your position, the square is the masked reading — whoever holds the result above you. Positions are illustrative; the point is that two of these gaps are worth closing and two are not.
Presenting complaint
A practice is told it ranks fourth and has no idea whether that is good. Fourth behind three national retailers is a different situation entirely from fourth behind a directory page nobody has updated since 2019, and the number cannot tell them apart.
Masking, and why the unmasked reading flatters
In audiometry, noise is presented to the other ear so the better ear cannot quietly answer on behalf of the one being tested. Without it the result looks better than the truth. A ranking read without the competitor above it has the same problem: it is a position, stripped of the only context that says what it is worth.
Four kinds of result, and only one is hard
Nearly everything above an independent practice falls into one of four categories, and they are not equally difficult.
- **Another independent practice** — the only genuinely comparable competitor, and the one worth studying properly
- **A national chain or retailer** — usually unbeatable on the device terms, and usually beatable on the clinical ones they do not offer
- **A hospital system** — enormous domain authority spent on a page that is one paragraph inside a department index
- **A directory** — holding the result because no practice in the market has written the page, which makes it the cheapest ground on the map
What a competitor is actually beating you with
For every tracked competitor: how many reviews and how recent, whether their profile is complete, how many clinical lines have a real page, whether clinicians have their own pages, and where their links come from. It is rarely a mystery once written down, and the answer is usually reviews and service-line pages rather than anything exotic.
The lines retail cannot deliver
A warehouse club cannot run vestibular testing, manage tinnitus, make custom protection for a musician or see a four-year-old. Those lines are frequently held by a directory or by nobody at all, and they are where an independent practice should spend first — which is the argument the whole service-line piece rests on.
What we recommend not fighting
The analysis ends with a list of searches to leave alone this year, with the reason attached. A practice that spends twelve months attacking a retailer on the device term arrives at the end of it with nothing, having ignored six searches it could have taken in a quarter.
What is included
- Who holds each line that matters, named and sorted: independent, chain, hospital or directory
- Where the gap is real, and where it is a page that has not been touched in years
- The clinical lines retail cannot deliver, checked against who currently ranks for them
- Review counts, profile completeness and site depth for every tracked competitor
- What is winnable this quarter, and what is not worth the fight
How it is measured
- A named competitor set, reviewed quarterly rather than assumed once
- Position against each competitor for the lines that matter, not overall
- Review count, recency and profile completeness tracked per competitor
- Movement attributed to something specific — a page they published, a profile they fixed
Questions
Questions about this piece
Who counts as a competitor?
Whoever appears above you for the searches you care about, which is often not who the practice names. Nearly every practice names the independent across town, and nearly every analysis turns up a directory and a retailer taking more of their searches.
Do you look at practices outside our area?
Only as a source of ideas. Local results are computed from where the searcher stands, so a practice two states away is not competing with you — though it may have written a page worth learning from.
How often does this need redoing?
Quarterly is enough for most single-location practices. The trigger to redo it sooner is a competitor publishing heavily or a new location opening inside the catchment.
This one rarely works alone.
The audit decides which pieces you actually need and in what order. You keep it whether or not you continue.
Works with
- 4 kHzKeyword researchWhat your catchment types, how much of it there is, and which of it is winnable.
- 8 kHzLocal SEO & Google MapsThe three results above the fold when someone types hearing test near me.
- UnaidedSEO audit (the practice audiogram)The unaided test: where the practice can be found, where it cannot, and the order to fix it in.