The No-See-Ums of Google: How Local Search Influences Your Dental Practice Online Reputation

Local Search & Patient Reviews for Dentists

No-See-Ums: tiny biting flies that often live near water.  You often see many of them swarming together in a cloud.  Keep your mouth shut or you might breathe some in or swallow them!  (It won’t hurt you, but it will probably make you cough.)   Biting midges are called no-see-ums because they’re so tiny that it is hard to see ‘um.  No-see-ums are less than ¼ of an inch long. (source: http://pelotes.jea.com/AnimalFact/Arthropod/NOSEEUM.htm)

Don’t worry; this isn’t an intro to fly fishing for dentists or even an entomology 101 dental hobby discourse.

Recent events emanating out of the annals of local search bring together the annoyance of no-see-ums with the importance of local small businesses – of which your dental practice is one.

Annoyance or Importance?

Probably both, IF your dental practice already had the digital marketing wherewithal to claim and control your Google Places listing.

If your office is not among the more digitally inclined, socially adept, and locally identifiable dental practices to have already circled the wagons, you better get moving before something like this happens to you.

This isn’t Fear Factor; you already have enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

We’re not looking to add to it, we only aim to shed some light on possible outcomes your FUD may invite due to inaction and apathy on your part.

Local search is an area of some mystification to most dentists around the country. Everyone sees the local listings prominently displayed on the search results pages, and everyone clamors to gain prominent exposure.

The gold rush is on, and the hacks are chipping away the integrity of the environment.

Most dentists ply away at their trade everyday immune (or is it clueless) to how Google Places is representing their dental practice.

We’ll only concentrate on Google Places with this post, because it’s the most widely used – and Google and Microsoft are ponying up to takeover Yahoo anyway. And the same tenets discussed with regards to Google, can certainly transfer over to the other two – Bing Local and Yahoo Local…and MapQuest too!

Don’t continue to ignore the no-see-ums…they could come up and bite you where the sun don’t shine.

5 Potential No-See-Ums of Google Places

• Negative digital word of mouth
• Inaccurate location information communicated
• False reviews unfairly attached to your listing
• Revolting images scraped and attached to your listing
• Competitors hijacking your listings

5 Possible (or is it probable) Outcomes of Ignoring the No-See-Ums

• Loss of patients
• Decrease in online visibility and website traffic
• Negative online reputation
• Missed lead to conversion opportunities for new patient acquisition
• Inaccurate (and potentially harmful) information communicated through your listing

Don’t let what happened to this deli owner in Alabama, happen to your dental practice in Anytown, U.S.A.

“His score on Google, which had plummeted to 1.5 stars, has climbed back up to 3.6 thanks to positive reviewers.”

Think about how much disposable income you’ve wasted in the past month.

Now think about devoting a tiny fraction of that income to protect, solidify, and ultimately profit from your online dental practice reputation.

What are your choices?

• Continued ignorance
• Wait, see, and hope it all works out
• Effective planning, protection, and increased production

Continue to ignore your Google Places listing and local search in its entirety, as an integral part (albeit relatively new) of your digital dental practice marketing plan and you too will soon feel the unpleasant sting of the no-see-ums.

Or maybe you could hire Samantha the serial reviewer from parts unknown, to go ahead and launch your dental practice patient review strategy right into the crapper!

Take the blinders off; the financial well-being of your practice is worth it!

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