Problem · Healthcare
A newer practice shows up above us on Google Maps and we do better work.
Patients search the specialty and the town, and three practices appear on the map before any website link. One of them is you, or none of them is, and a practice that opened two years ago sits at the top. The map pack does not rank outcomes. It ranks proximity, relevance, and prominence, and prominence is mostly reviews, review recency, and the pages on your site that name the town and the service.
How people search thiscompetitor outranks us on google maps · how to rank higher in google map pack medical practice · get more google reviews for doctors office · local seo for medical practice · google business profile optimization healthcare
Catalyst at $5,000 a month builds the local service pages and runs the review velocity system alongside the campaign. Google Business Profile discipline is part of the ramp on any tier for a practice. Pricing is published.
What the map pack ranks on
Proximity to the searcher, which you cannot change. Relevance, which is whether your profile and your site name the exact service and town the patient typed. Prominence, which is review count, review recency, review response, and the authority of the pages behind the profile. A practice with 40 reviews averaging one a month and a site with one services page loses to a practice with 300 reviews arriving weekly and a page per service line per town, whatever the outcomes.
The review velocity system
Ask every patient at checkout, by text, with a direct link, the same day. Assign one person per location to send it and one to respond to every review within 48 hours, including the bad ones. Track weekly count per location. Practices that go from ad hoc to systematic typically move from one or two reviews a month to eight to fifteen, and the map position follows within a quarter. Never incentivize, never gate, never filter; the platforms detect all three and the penalty is worse than the problem.
The pages behind the profile
A Google Business Profile with every service listed, categories set precisely, photos of the actual office, and posts on a cadence. On the site, one page per service line that names the town, with clinician forward content, structured data, and the covered intake form. The profile links to the matching page, not the homepage. That relevance signal is what a newer practice with a modern site has and a better practice with a 2016 site does not.
Questions on this problem
Yes, without confirming the reviewer was a patient or discussing care. A response template that thanks, invites a call, and says nothing clinical is part of the runbook.
One quarter of systematic review velocity plus local pages, in most markets. Dense urban specialties take longer; suburban ones move faster.
Local packages sell citations and directory listings, which matter less every year. Reviews, response, and local pages are the work, and they come with any tier for a practice.
George Stoff, Founder and Lead Engineer
Thirty years building software, brands, and demand. On every account.