Local search and the map packLocal SEO and Google Maps rankings for audiology practices
The three results above the fold when someone types hearing test near me.
The problem
A practice checks its ranking from the office, sees itself at the top, and concludes local search is handled. Two miles north, in the suburb where half the retirement communities are, it does not appear at all.
One ranking is not a ranking
Local results are computed from where the searcher is standing, which means a practice does not have a position, it has a surface. That surface can be excellent at the pin and fall off a cliff four miles out, and the only place it is ever checked is the one place it looks best.
We sample it properly: a grid of points across the catchment, each one queried for the terms that matter, repeated monthly so movement is visible as a shape rather than a number. It is unglamorous and it is the difference between knowing you rank and knowing where you do not.
Distance decay is steeper here than in most trades
Someone will drive an hour for a surgeon and will not drive twenty minutes for a hearing test, because they believe the test is the same everywhere. That belief is wrong and it is not going to be argued away, so proximity does more work in this category than in almost any other. It also means the winnable ground is specific: the neighbourhoods you are already close to and are somehow losing.
What actually moves a local ranking
Most of it is unexciting and most of it is undone at the average practice.
- Primary category set to Audiologist rather than something adjacent, with the secondary categories that are true and no more
- Every service and product entry filled, because those fields are read and most profiles leave them blank
- Hours that are correct, including the holiday hours nobody updates, since a wrong-hours visit produces the review that undoes a quarter
- Photo cadence, which is a freshness signal and also the only thing a nervous patient looks at
- Review velocity that is steady rather than spiky
- A location page per site that carries real detail about that place, not a template with a town name in it
Duplicates and departed clinicians
Practices accumulate listings. An old suite number, a practice name from before the merger, a profile for an audiologist who left in 2019 and still has a five-star page outranking yours. Every one of those splits the signal and some of them route calls into a voicemail nobody checks. Finding and merging them is usually the first real ranking movement an engagement produces.
The most common local-search problem we find is not that a practice is doing it badly. It is that a practice from 2016 is still competing with the practice from today.
Questions about this piece
How long does profile work take to show?
Sixty to ninety days for most of it, and it shows unevenly — a suburb at a time rather than the whole catchment at once. Category and duplicate fixes are usually the fastest movers.
Do we need a separate page for each location?
Yes, and it needs to be a real page. Two location pages that differ only by the town name compete with each other and convince nobody. If a location cannot support a genuinely distinct page, that is worth knowing before it is built.
Can you get us into the map pack for a town we do not have an office in?
Not reliably, and we will not sell it. Proximity is doing too much work. What is achievable is the organic result underneath the map, which is a slower and considerably more honest route into a neighbouring market.
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
- 8 kHzGoogle Business Profile optimization
Categories, services, hours, providers and photos: the fields that decide the map pack, filled in properly.
- 4 kHzService-line SEO
Tinnitus, balance, cerumen, custom protection, paediatrics. Real demand, usually unclaimed.
- 250 HzReviews & reputation management
Volume, recency and response, collected in a way that discloses no care.