Twelve locations, three brand names, four phone numbers: the acquisition left a mess only machines can see.
Each acquisition kept its old name “for the goodwill.” The website lists numbers that ring at closed desks. Two doctors who left years ago still have practitioner profiles collecting reviews. To a patient it is confusing; to Google it looks like twelve businesses pretending to be related — or one business pretending to be twelve.
The cleanup sequence
- 1. Decide the architecture first. One brand everywhere, or sub-brands per location? This is a business decision with SEO consequences, and no listing should be touched until it is made — otherwise you clean toward a target that moves.
- 2. Build the single source of truth: one location page per office on your own site — unique address, unique local number, hours, practitioners actually working there, embedded map. These pages are what everything else gets reconciled against.
- 3. Fix Google Business Profiles: one profile per location, matching the source of truth exactly. Merge duplicates rather than deleting where reviews are at stake — deletion throws away years of trust.
- 4. Retire ghost practitioners. Departed doctors’ profiles must be unlinked or properly transferred, and their pages on your site redirected sensibly. A stranger reading reviews for a doctor who left in 2022 is trust leaking in public.
- 5. Then the directory long tail, worst first: the high-traffic health directories and data aggregators that feed the smaller ones. Fix upstream, and much of downstream follows.
Questions people ask
What does NAP consistency mean for multi-location businesses?
Name, Address, Phone: every location needs exactly one version of each, identical across your site, Google profiles and directories. Machines treat disagreement as unreliability.
Should acquired practices keep their old names?
It is a brand decision first - but whichever architecture you choose must be applied consistently everywhere. The costly option is the middle state: multiple names for the same entity.
What about profiles of practitioners who left?
Unlink or transfer them properly and redirect their pages. Active profiles for departed staff confuse patients, leak trust and muddy the business entity machines see.
What does NAP consistency mean for multi-location businesses?
Name, Address, Phone: every location needs exactly one version of each, identical across your site, Google profiles and directories. Machines treat disagreement as unreliability.
Should acquired practices keep their old names?
It is a brand decision first - but whichever architecture you choose must be applied consistently everywhere. The costly option is the middle state: multiple names for the same entity.
What about profiles of practitioners who left?
Unlink or transfer them properly and redirect their pages. Active profiles for departed staff confuse patients, leak trust and muddy the business entity machines see.
Scenarios are composites built from real, common situations — not client stories. We publish no metrics we cannot prove.