Posted on November 5, 2025

Case Study: How Adding Products and Services to Your Medical Practice’s Google Business Profile Impacts Rankings

Do location modifiers like Near You or Near [City] in product and service titles improve Google Maps rankings?

Case Study Summary

This case study examines how enhancing Google Business Profiles for a medical practice with products, services, and targeted phrases influences Google Maps rankings. Data was collected over 12 weeks from March 10 to June 6th, tracking keywords grouped into services-only, products-only, and control groups.

Key findings:

1. Adding a full catalog of products and services improved average ranking by about 20 to 23%.
2. Generic phrase “Near you” provided modest gains (~12 % for services, negligible for products).
3. Geo-specific phase “Near [City]” yielded stronger improvements for both service and product groups. (~9-10 %).
4. Removing products and services caused rankings to decline by 11–18 %.

Objectives & Methods

Determine how listing enhancements affect rankings across four interventions: adding products/services, adding “Near you,” swapping “Near you” for “Near [City], and removing products/services altogether.

Methods: Keywords were divided into three groups (services‑only, products‑only, control). Average ranking positions were monitored across 7 dates using a 9×9 ranking grid covering a 3-mile radius, representing 49 individual points. Data was logged sequentially on March 10th, March 24th, April 7th, April 21st, May 5th, May 29th, and June 6th to measure performance trends over time.

Analysis & Results

After adding products and services, average rankings improved — from 24.00 to 20.76 for the services group and from 11.37 to 9.40 for the products group.

• When “Near you” was added to titles, the service group rankings improved further to 18.27, while the products group held steady at 9.42.
• Replacing “Near you” with “Near [City]” produced the best results, improving averages to 16.35 (services) and 8.60 (products).
• Finally, removing all products and services caused rankings to decline to 18.18 (services) and 10.13 (products).

This progression highlights a clear trend: completeness and location-specific phrasing drive visibility. The initial improvements from adding products and services suggest that Google rewards fully fleshed‑out listings because it values authoritative practices. 

The modest boost after appending “Near you” shows that generic proximity modifiers provide limited value, potentially because Google’s local algorithm already infers proximity from the searcher’s location. However, replacing the generic term with the actual city name yields a larger benefit, indicating that explicit geographic keywords strengthen local relevance cues for both users and Google. The sharp decline following the removal of products and services underscores how critical comprehensive information is to maintaining visibility. 

Recommendations

1. Create a comprehensive catalog of your products and services.

Include both products and services within your Google Business Profile to achieve the most significant ranking improvements.

2. Localize your titles.

Incorporate city-specific names (e.g., “Eye Exams in Portland”) rather than “generic terms (e.g., “Eye Exams Near You”) to reinforce local relevance and improve visibility in nearby searches.

3. Keep content up to date.

Regularly review and update your products and services to reflect your current offerings or new technologies. Google rewards active, accurate profiles, and consistent updates signal to both users and search engines that your business is engaged and trustworthy.

Conclusions

Optimizing Google Business Profiles with a complete set of products and services, including location-specific verbiage, delivers measurable improvements in local visibility. Listings that incorporated both products and services saw ranking gains of up to 23%, while removing them led to clear declines. Including city-specific verbiage within product and service titles further enhanced performance.

This case study demonstrates that the quality of content and geographic specificity in Google Business Profiles directly influence local search performance. For medical clinics, maintaining detailed offerings and using location-specific keywords is essential for staying visible in highly competitive markets.

Ready to boost your practice’s local visibility? Contact the team at Glacial Multimedia to get started.