09/26/2024
Can You Hide Your Address & Still Rank in Google?
Ever since therapists went online during Covid, virtual therapy has increased wayyyyy beyond what it used to be.
Many therapists fell in love with working from home. But, they don’t want to advertise their home address. Understandable!
Some of the questions we continually get are…
* Can I still rank in Google if I hide my address?
* Can’t I specify my business as a Service Area Business (SAB), and still rank? Other types of businesses do!
Our experience is that we rarely see therapists rank on page 1 without an address.
I know that this isn’t a popular answer. And for folks who don’t want to believe this, our anecdotal experience isn’t very convincing.
In addition to the challenge of delivering this bad news, it’s always bothered me that we haven’t known how to solve this problem.
Why could some businesses (electricians, plumbers, etc.) rank without an address and yet therapists struggled? I wondered if I was missing some strategy to make this happen.
So this week, I reached out to one of the most sought out experts in the local search world – Darren Shaw of Whitespark.
I asked him why plumbers and electricians can rank without an address but therapists can’t. I wondered if Google had different categories for businesses and ranked them differently based on the business type.
I.e.
“Valid” Service Area Businesses– like home services–where Google expects that you’re not in an office
vs
Other types of “traditional” office-bound businesses where Google expects an office presence.
Darren agreed that he hears this complaint all the time. He sent me some interesting "case studies" about service area businesses, but… more importantly, after we talked back and forth several times, he got so curious that he decided to run a HUGE test of therapists and their rankings!
A Test of 5000+ Therapist Rankings!
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Since Darren owns Whitespark, he was able to run a large-scale ranking test of therapists throughout the US using the WhiteSpark Local Rank Tracker!
The Test
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Darren fired up the Whitespark Local Rank Tracker and entered:
* 6 common therapy keywords
* 37 cities in the US
The goal was to see who was ranking for these keywords, how high they were ranking, and if there was a difference in rankings between folks who had addresses showing and those who had them hidden.
The Results
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This search showed that:
* 5056 unique therapy businesses rank in the top 100 GBP results
* Of these, 5037 show addresses in their GBP listing - approximately 96%
* 195 didn’t show addresses in their GBP listing - approximately 4%
* Of those that showed addresses, 15% (725) had top 10 rankings
* Of those that didn’t show addresses, only 5% (10) had top 10 rankings
The Important Takeaway
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Therapists that showed their address were 3 times more likely to rank in the top 10 GBP listings.
Now, some caveats:
* These were GBP rankings. We were not looking at the organic rankings below the maps 3-pak. The WhiteSpark Local Rank Tracker tracks GBP listings only.
* We don’t know the relative strength of the associated websites for any of these practices. (It would be a huge undertaking to assess that!)
But, we do know that the strength of a GBP affects a site’s ability to rank organically, so this is telling data!
What’s Next?
Darren’s theory is that Google isn’t treating therapists differently than SAB-types of businesses but that Google is observing “normal behavior” for the industry. Since most therapists list their office address, Google expects that from all therapists. Those who don’t aren’t trusted as much and need to have something really, really strong to offset the lack of an address in order to rank.
This same pattern has been seen in other ways. An example is this: If most of your competitors list their office hours in their GBP listing, then you should, too. Google learns the patterns within industries and questions those that don’t follow the industry patterns.
I Have Two More Case Studies - Want Them?
I have two more case studies that you may find interesting:
1. One specific test that showed how hiding an address hurt rankings
2. One specific test that showed that adding an address back brought fast ranking improvements for the GBP.
If you want me to send these to you, just let me know.
Lastly, do any of you know any therapists without an address? Maybe we can ask them to add one, even for a short bit, to see if the ranks jump up? I'd love to test this.
Let me know!
