Why discoverability is a record problem, not a ranking problem
Most clinics that worry about being found treat the question as a contest. They ask who is above them, what those clinics are doing, and how much it would cost to overtake them. That framing produces anxiety and very little action, because the ranking of a search result is an output of a system nobody outside it can see.
There is a more tractable question underneath it. Before anything can rank, a search engine has to hold a description of the clinic, and that description has to be right. The address has to be the address. The hours have to be the hours. The services listed have to be services the clinic performs. When those facts disagree across sources, the engine has to choose which to believe, and it will sometimes choose the wrong one. That is not a competitive problem. It is a record-keeping problem, and record-keeping is something a clinic can fix in an afternoon.
This instrument therefore assesses the record. It asks whether each published fact about the clinic is correct, whether it is the same everywhere, and whether somebody at the clinic is responsible for it. Those three properties are within your control regardless of what any other clinic does. A clinic that scores well here has not beaten anybody. It has simply stopped losing patients to details it never checked.
The distinction matters for a second reason. Ranking advice ages badly. Guidance on how a particular result page is assembled is out of date within months. Record accuracy does not age. A correct address was correct in 2015 and will be correct in 2030, and every system that ingests it, including systems that do not exist yet, benefits from the same discipline.
How to score this instrument
Work through the twelve criteria in order, scoring each 0 to 3 against the descriptor written beside it. The descriptors are written so that 0 and 3 are unambiguous. Where you genuinely sit between them, score 1 if the thing exists but is neither documented nor owned, and 2 if it is documented or owned but not both.
Score what is true today, not what is planned. A profile that somebody intends to claim scores 0. A directory sweep that is on next quarter's list scores 0. This is uncomfortable and it is the point: an assessment that credits intentions produces a number that flatters the clinic and helps nobody.
Score with the evidence open in front of you. Open the profile, open the website, open the directories, and check each claim. Scoring from memory reliably produces a total four to six points higher than scoring from evidence, because people remember the state of things at the moment they last thought about them.
Two people should score independently where possible, then reconcile. Disagreement is informative. If the practice manager scores hours accuracy 3 and the receptionist scores it 0, you have found something more useful than either number.
Record the total and the date. The value of this instrument is almost entirely in the second run: a total of 22 means little on its own, and a great deal when the previous run was 14.
How to count each criterion
Scoring is only as good as the counting behind it. The five sections below set out what to count for each group of criteria, and how to decide what is in scope before any figure is written down.
Set the assessment boundary before counting
Define one clinic location before beginning. Record the public-facing clinic name, full postal address, principal telephone number, website domain, normal opening hours and the date on which the review is made. If the organisation operates from several locations, complete a separate sheet for each one. Combining locations can conceal a mismatch in an address, phone number, category or review profile.
Next, set a treatment-and-place sample. The sample should reflect services the clinic currently provides and places it is entitled to describe. For each sample item, write the treatment term and the place term exactly as searched. Place terms may include the locality, town, borough or other geographical wording used by prospective patients. Do not assume that a term should be assessed merely because it has search volume or resembles a competitor’s wording. This scorecard records the clinic’s published evidence, not a content plan.
For the platform-presence row, carry out the same searches in a logged-out browser where possible and retain screenshots or dated notes of the visible result types. The aim is to identify platforms that actually appear in the clinic’s selected treatment-plus-place result set. A platform that does not appear in that sample is not automatically required evidence. A platform that does appear repeatedly is in scope for checking.
- Use a dated sample sheet, not memory.
- Identify one person accountable for collecting evidence.
- Record whether a change of name, telephone number, address or hours is underway.
- Keep organic results, map-style results and third-party listings distinct in notes.
This boundary prevents a high score being built from an undefined or unusually favourable set of searches.
Score name, address and telephone consistency
Check the clinic’s public details across the third-party directories and platforms found in the selected search sample, plus any material directory where the clinic maintains a profile. Compare each listing with the assessment boundary. Treat changes in street number, postcode, locality, telephone number, clinic name or branch designation as meaningful differences. A harmless formatting variation may not be a defect, but it should still be recorded where it could make identity unclear.
Count the listings reviewed, the listings that match the reference details, and the listings that are incorrect, duplicate or inaccessible to the clinic. A listing that cannot be located should be logged separately from an incorrect listing. Do not mark a directory consistent because a search result looks similar at a glance. Check the public listing itself where available.
| Row: name, address and telephone | Score | Evidence required |
|---|---|---|
| Absent | 0 | Material inconsistency, duplicate ambiguity or no listing audit record. |
| Partial | 1 | Some checked listings match, but one or more material listings differ or the checked set is undefined. |
| Controlled | 2 | All in-scope checked listings match the recorded reference details, with exceptions documented. |
| Maintained | 3 | Controlled evidence plus a dated recheck trigger for changes to identity or contact details. |
This row does not measure how many directories exist, whether a directory is valuable, or whether a listing will rank. It measures whether the clinic can evidence a coherent public identity across the listings it has chosen to review.
Score presence, category and opening-hours evidence
Use the search sample to make a list of the third-party platforms that repeatedly appear for selected treatment-plus-place searches. For each in-scope platform, record whether the clinic has a public presence, whether the listing points to the correct location, and whether the available category describes the clinic’s current activity without implying a service it does not provide. Categories can influence how a listing is interpreted, but this scorecard does not prescribe which category a clinic should select.
Then check opening hours. Record the normal hours displayed on each listing and compare them with the reference record. If the clinic operates by appointment, has variable sessions, or closes on particular dates, score the clarity of what patients can see rather than imposing a fixed format. Contradictory hours, absent hours where the platform supports them, and stale temporary information should be logged as exceptions.
| Row | 0 to 3 score test |
|---|---|
| Presence on observed platforms | 0: no evidence. 1: present on some observed platforms. 2: present and location-correct on all in-scope observed platforms. 3: score 2 plus dated ownership and review record. |
| Category accuracy | 0: materially misleading or unreviewed. 1: categories exist but are incomplete or uncertain. 2: categories have been checked against current activity. 3: score 2 plus documented review after service changes. |
| Opening-hours completeness | 0: absent or materially conflicting. 1: shown on some in-scope listings. 2: complete and consistent where fields are available. 3: score 2 plus documented checks for temporary changes. |
Score these as three separate rows. A clinic can have a complete profile on one visible platform and still have weak evidence across the wider observed set.
Score review count, recency and location attribution
Reviews are a visible local signal, but a raw total alone is not a sufficient assessment. Record the displayed review count for each in-scope platform, the date of the most recent visible review, and whether the reviews are clearly attributed to the clinic location being assessed. Where a platform combines several locations or brands, note that limitation. Do not transfer review totals between platforms, and do not infer that a review on one service appears elsewhere.
This instrument deliberately does not set a target number of reviews or a target frequency. A fixed target would ignore clinic age, location structure, patient volume, platform rules and the way a particular result page presents reviews. Instead, it tests whether the clinic can identify its review evidence, distinguish old from recent activity, and see where the public record may no longer represent the current location.
| Row: review evidence | Score | Evidence required |
|---|---|---|
| Absent | 0 | No dated record of count, recency or location attribution. |
| Partial | 1 | Count or recent date is recorded for some in-scope profiles, but not all. |
| Controlled | 2 | Count, most recent visible date and location attribution are recorded for every in-scope profile. |
| Maintained | 3 | Controlled evidence plus a consistent dated review cadence in the assessment record. |
This is not a review-solicitation assessment and does not judge review wording, ratings, complaint handling or platform policy compliance. Those questions require separate evidence.
Score treatment-plus-place page ownership
For every item in the treatment-and-place sample, identify the single page on the clinic’s own site that is intended to answer that query. Record the page title or other stable internal identifier, the treatment term, the place term and the date checked. The test is not whether the page ranks. It is whether one page has a clear ownership role, rather than several pages competing ambiguously for the same subject.
Review the search results on the clinic’s own site and ordinary external search results where available. Note whether the candidate page is joined by near-duplicate treatment pages, location pages, blog articles or archived material that present substantially the same treatment-plus-place proposition. The presence of related pages is not automatically a failure. The question is whether a reader and a search system are given a clear primary destination.
| Row: treatment-plus-place page ownership | Score | Evidence required |
|---|---|---|
| Absent | 0 | No identified owner page for one or more sampled terms, or obvious uncontrolled duplication. |
| Partial | 1 | Owner pages are identified for some terms, but several pages remain plausible owners for others. |
| Controlled | 2 | Each sampled term has one recorded primary page and duplicate candidates are documented. |
| Maintained | 3 | Controlled evidence plus a dated process for reassessing ownership after publishing or restructuring. |
For a related measurement of local clinic visibility, see the publication’s existing local SEO for aesthetic clinics assessment. This scorecard remains limited to recording the clarity of ownership evidence.
Evidence checklist: what to record, where it came from and when
Scoring is only defensible if someone else can see what was looked at. Record these four checks before scoring the criteria, each with the source it came from and the date it was seen, because every one of them can change without the clinic touching anything.
| Check | What to record | Source field | Date field |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business profile completeness | Who holds the login, the verification state, the primary and secondary categories, the hours including exceptions, and whether every field a reader would use is filled | The profile itself, in the dashboard rather than in the public panel | Date the dashboard was opened |
| Clinic location signals | The name, address and telephone number exactly as written, on the website, the profile and every directory that carries them, plus what the signage and the door actually say | Each source named one by one, not as a group | Date each source was read |
| Treatment page alignment | For each treatment the clinic performs, the one page that owns it and the place it names, and any treatment with no page or two pages | The site's own pages, listed by URL | Date the list was taken |
| Review visibility | The count, the date of the most recent review and which location it is attributed to, on each platform the clinic appears on | Each platform named separately | Date of the count, because it moves |
Keep the four records together with the score sheet. A score with no source and no date cannot be compared with the next one, and comparing the same clinic with itself over time is the only comparison this publication makes.
Common scoring errors
Scoring the intention rather than the artefact. The most frequent error by a wide margin. "We know our address is consistent" is not evidence. Open the listings.
Treating the website as the record. The website is one publication of the record. Patients arrive through profiles, maps, aggregators and directories that were populated years ago from sources nobody remembers.
Scoring service coverage generously. A profile that lists a treatment the clinic stopped offering is worse than a profile that omits it, because it generates enquiries the clinic must decline. Score 0 if anything listed is not currently provided.
Confusing volume with accuracy. Appearing in forty directories is not a score of 3 on duplicate listings. It is usually a score of 0, because nobody has checked what those forty entries say.
Scoring structured data by presence rather than validity. Markup that is present but contains a different phone number from the profile is scoring against you, not for you. Validate it, and check that the values match the source of record. The local business structured data documentation sets out what the fields expect.
What to do after scoring, by criterion rather than by band
Bands describe a state. Actions belong to criteria. Once you have a total, ignore it for a moment and look at which individual rows scored 0 or 1, because those are the work.
If profile ownership scored low, everything else is provisional. A record you cannot edit is a record somebody else controls. Recover access before touching anything downstream.
If name, address or contact consistency scored low, write the source of record document first. It takes twenty minutes and it converts an open-ended tidying exercise into a checklist, because every listing is then either identical to the document or it is not.
If hours or service coverage scored low, the fix is a cycle rather than an edit. Assign the review to a named role with a fixed frequency, and record the date of the last check somewhere visible.
If structured data scored low, treat it as a website task and pair it with the technical foundations audit, which covers the same territory more thoroughly. If duplicates scored low, budget a half day: finding legacy listings is slow, unglamorous and worth doing once properly.
When the low rows are closed, move outward. The intent coverage gap analysis asks a different question: not whether your record is right, but whether you have anything to say to the people the record brings you.