Example
Ranking report
Summary, and the three things to fix first
Maple Street Hearing is easy to find by name and holds second or third place on the map for "audiologist" and "hearing test". It drops out of the top three for the two searches that bring in most new hearing aid patients, "hearing aids carverton" and "hearing aids near me", where two manufacturer-owned locations and an ENT group sit above it. It is effectively invisible for repairs and tinnitus, two services it offers every day. The website has no page for either.
- Change the primary category from Hearing aid store to Audiologist, and list every service. The profile has 2 of the 11 services the clinic provides. Dr. Alvarez has no practitioner listing. This is a one-afternoon change and the most likely to move the "hearing aids" searches.
- Publish three pages: hearing aid repairs and cleanings, real-ear measurement, and tinnitus evaluation. Nobody on page one for "hearing aid repair carverton" is a hearing clinic in Carverton. The first real page has a strong chance at the spot.
- Fix the hours and the review routine. The profile says "Open 24 hours"; the door says 8:30 to 5. Twenty-three reviews, none in seven months, none answered. One request, sent to every patient the same way after the visit, and a reply to each review that does not confirm the person was seen.
Where the clinic shows, as an audiogram
Eight searches, plotted the way you plot a hearing test. The easy searches sit on the left, as low frequencies do, and the hard ones on the right. A red O is the clinic's position in the map results; a blue X is the clinic's website in the results under the map. The dashed line at 25 is the top-three cutoff: marks above it mean the clinic is one of the first three a searcher sees.
- Map results (right ear, O)
- Website results (left ear, X)
- Top three cutoff
- 1 maple street hearing
- 2 audiologist carverton
- 3 hearing test carverton
- 4 hearing aids carverton
- 5 hearing aids near me
- 6 hearing aid repair carverton
- 7 tinnitus treatment carverton
- 8 hearing aid fitting near me
| Search | Map results | Website | Who holds the top three |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. maple street hearing | 1st | 1st | The clinic, then a review site and a directory listing for the clinic |
| 2. audiologist carverton | 2nd | 3rd | Map: an ENT physician group, the clinic, a hospital audiology department. Web: the ENT group, the hospital, the clinic |
| 3. hearing test carverton | 3rd | 5th | Map: the hospital, a manufacturer-owned location, the clinic. Web: a manufacturer's brand page, a review site, the hospital, the ENT group, the clinic |
| 4. hearing aids carverton | 5th | 8th | Map: two manufacturer-owned locations and the ENT group. Web: a manufacturer-owned chain's location page, a big-box club's page, a manufacturer's store locator |
| 5. hearing aids near me (from the square) | 6th | 9th | Map: a manufacturer-owned location, a franchise location, the ENT group. Web: three chain or manufacturer pages |
| 6. hearing aid repair carverton | 14th | 24th | Map: a franchise location, a big-box club, a shop two towns over. Web: a manufacturer's repair page, a national mail-in repair service, a review site |
| 7. tinnitus treatment carverton | not in the first 20 | not found in five pages | Map: the ENT group, the hospital, a chiropractor. Web: two national health sites and the ENT group |
| 8. hearing aid fitting near me | 8th | 12th | Map: two manufacturer-owned locations and the hospital. Web: a manufacturer's brand page, the hospital, a review site |
Searches 5 and 8 were run with the phone's location set to the courthouse square. A patient on the east side of town will see a slightly different map pack. The report describes the businesses above the clinic by kind and does not name them.
Google Business Profile
- Primary category
- Hearing aid store. The clinic has an audiologist on site, so Audiologist is the accurate primary, with Hearing aid store and Hearing aid repair service as secondaries. Google's rule is to pick the category that describes the core business, as few as possible. Google sometimes changes categories itself; we would check the category monthly.
- Services
- 2 listed (Hearing aids, Hearing tests). The clinic offers 11: diagnostic hearing evaluation, hearing aid evaluation and fitting, real-ear measurement, hearing aid repair, cleaning and check, earwax removal, tinnitus evaluation, custom hearing protection, assistive listening devices, OTC hearing aid help, and a Medicare diagnostic visit without a referral. Each needs its own entry with a description.
- Hours
- "Open 24 hours". The front desk is staffed 8:30 to 5, Monday to Friday. Google asks for customer-facing hours. A clinic that sees patients only by appointment should not list hours at all; one with a staffed desk for batteries, cleanings and walk-in repairs should list those hours.
- Practitioner listing
- None. Dr. Alvarez sees patients at this address during stated hours and can have a practitioner profile under her own name, which the practice profile links to. Google says a practitioner profile is titled with the practitioner's own name, not the organization's. The hearing instrument specialist does not need one unless patients book with him directly.
- Description
- 180 of 750 characters, and it leads with "family owned since 1998". It should say what the clinic does, who does it and for whom, in plain words, with no URLs and no promotions, which Google's description rules require anyway.
- Photos
- 6, all stock. We would replace them with real photos of the front door, the waiting room, the sound booth, the real-ear equipment and the repair bench. No patients, no staff without written consent.
- Appointment link
- Missing. The website has a request form; Google allows a "Book an appointment" link and lets you mark one as preferred.
- Reviews
- 23, averaging 4.9, the most recent seven months old, no replies. The two manufacturer-owned locations above the clinic for "hearing aids carverton" have 61 and 140, with replies to most. A review request sent to every patient the same way, after the visit, by the clinic's own system, would start to close that gap. Replies must not confirm the reviewer is a patient; HHS has settled at least two cases over review replies that did.
- Name, address, phone
- The phone number on the profile is the old line. Three directories carry the old address from before the 2022 move. We would fix all of them in the first month.
The website
- Pages
- Six: home, about, hearing aids, hearing tests, insurance, contact. No page for repairs, real-ear measurement, earwax, tinnitus, protection or OTC help. Each missing page is a search the clinic cannot rank for.
- The hearing aids page
- Lists six manufacturers' names and "hearing aids from $995" with no usual price, no model, and no statement of the 30-day trial the state requires. Depending on the state, a discount advertised without the usual price can itself be a violation (Texas Occupations Code 402.103(c) lists it; Florida rule 64B6-7.004 does the same). We would replace the price line with the clinic's real pricing policy and trial terms, written with the provider.
- Clinical content
- The hearing tests page describes "a quick screening". The clinic actually runs full diagnostic evaluations (air and bone conduction, speech testing, tympanometry). The page undersells the clinic and does not match the Medicare direct-access visit the clinic can offer.
- Speed and phones
- Largest contentful paint 6.1 seconds on a phone over 4G, mostly a 3.4 MB hero image. The appointment form needs pinching to use. A reader over 60 on a phone is the audience, so this is the first technical fix.
- Tracking
- A session recording script and an advertising pixel load on every page, including the appointment request form where visitors type a reason for the visit. HHS's remaining guidance treats that as a disclosure to the vendor. We would remove both from every page that touches a condition, an appointment or a test, and keep only cookieless page counts.
- Structured data
- None. We would add schema.org LocalBusiness data with the most specific type Google offers, the address, hours and the practitioner, which Google does not guarantee to show but does read.
- Five-year view
- Third-party estimates show the site ranking for 41 searches in October 2021 and 27 in October 2026, a loss of a third. That is the pattern we saw in three of eight independent clinics in our four-town sample. The losses are concentrated in "hearing aids [town]" searches, which is where the chain location pages arrived.
The first 90 days, if the clinic hires us
- Days 1 to 30
- Profile: category, 11 services, hours, practitioner listing, description, 12 real photos, appointment link, old phone number and three directory addresses corrected. Site: hero image cut to 180 KB, tracking removed from patient pages, structured data added, 30-day trial terms stated. Report at day 30.
- Days 31 to 60
- Three new pages (repairs and cleanings, real-ear measurement, tinnitus evaluation) and a rewrite of the hearing aids and hearing tests pages, each approved by Dr. Alvarez before publication. Review request message written for the clinic's staff to set up in its own patient system: same message to everyone, no incentive, sent the day after the visit. Reply to all 23 existing reviews.
- Days 61 to 90
- Earwax, custom protection and OTC-help pages. First article: what an earbud hearing test result means and what a full evaluation adds. Second monthly report, with the audiogram re-plotted, call taps and direction requests from Google's counts, and the plan for month four.
The monthly fee for this plan
In a real report, the flat monthly fee for the plan above goes here, in writing, with no setup fee and 30 days' notice either side. This example leaves the number out because the fee depends on what the check finds.
What we would not touch
The patient management system and anything in it. The clinic's manufacturer agreements and pricing. The insurance and Medicare Advantage contracts (we would describe the direct-access visit the way CMS does, once per 12 months, not for hearing aid fitting, and nothing more). Social media. Paid ads, including Local Services Ads, which list Audiologist as an eligible category and which the clinic can run itself if it wants to; we would tell it what to expect. Any claim about outcomes, "restores hearing", "invisible", or a brand being "the best".