Healthcare Reserve with Google Mayhem

Healthcare practitioners are in an uproar over the fact that Reserve with Google buttons are appearing on their Google Profiles, often sending potential patients down appointment rabbit holes.

What's Happening?

William Schroeder of Just Mind Counseling in Austin shared an email that detailed the issue and why it's a huge problem:

Schroder reached out to Clinic Trackers who "claim to have a relationship with us, but we've never heard of them. We once had a demo of Clinic Tracker, but that’s the extent of our interaction. I contacted Clinic Tracker who is apparently behind this and they said:"

Thanks for your email.  We are an official Reserve with Google partner.

It looks like your business was registered on one of our platforms ooot.com to generate for your business more leads, more clients, more bookings with no costs helping your business, so because our platform is partnered with google you got extra listed on google maps free of charge to get more appointments and bookings in your inbox. You have the right contact details on the platform already that means for any new appointment and new client you will get an email notification that includes all customer details asking for your services. This is generating more leads, appointments for your business and all free. It takes 24-48 hours for Google to update their servers.

Bug or Feature?

Whenever you see something happen like this with Google one has to ask whether it is an exploit, a bug or (as is all too often the case) a half-baked feature rollout.

We are seeing this happening with Reserve with Google providers like Practo as well ooot.com. And there have been indications that ClinicSoftware, Clinic Tracker and others are involved.

Google had long taken feeds from scheduling companies to insert onto business' GBP profiles with or without approval of the business. It became such a problem in the restaurant industry that Google finally added a feature to GBP to allow the link's removal and created a help page with instructions and a form to report scheduling companies that didn't comply. Unfortunately that feature is not available for healthcare businesses now showing the link.

As Clinic Tracker noted: "We are an official Reserve with Google partner." That means that the oot.com feed (as well as others) was likely an approved Google feed. The fact that the GBP dashboard does not offer a direct way to control this is par for the Google rollout course, where first they achieve scale and then later worry about which small business has been negatively impacted, and how they might automate complaints so as to not involve any humans.

What Should Your Practice Do?

Check your Google Business Profile and determine if your listing has been impacted. You need to then determine the source of the feed and whether it's coming from your current software or something you previously used.

For the US & UK

There are probably more sources, but so far these have been the ones reported as sources for ooot.com.

ClinicSoftware instructions: Email to contact@clinicsoftware.com or go to https://clinicsoftware.com/find-us, open a chat and request a complete deletion of your profile 

Clinic Tracker instructions: Complete the DELETION REQUEST FORM 

For India

You need to reach out to Procto.com help via email at support@practo.com. According to one poster, they were very slow to change it until he sent them a lawyer letter.

Per the Google support document, scheduling providers need to remove third-party links from your profile within 5 days of receiving a removal request. If a provider doesn’t process your request, use this form to report a violation. That being said, Google just collates these complaints and may or more likely, may not, actually remove the link.

What's Next?

It is extremely likely that this isn't an exploit or a bug. It appears to me that Google is moving their Reserve with Google feature into healthcare. They have historically avoided making appointments in fields that accept insurance but it appears they are "broadening their horizons."

Google, as a matter of philosophy, scales first and worries about issues later. They have always done so and it appears to be the case here. In the end, they have NO PROBLEM pushing the cost on to the business that has to try and deal with the resultant mess.

This should put every medical practice on alert. Be ready for an unauthorized Booking button to appear on your profile – one you didn't ask for, and have no idea where it came from, but will be forced to deal with.