When Google Gets It Wrong, Patients (and You) Suffer

Megan Yezak, marketing manager at MidMichigan Health

Anyone who’s been to a large hospital campus can relate to how hard it is to figure out where to go, even with GPS and Google Maps. Should you go in the north entrance or the south entrance? Is your doctor in the main hospital building or another building? Is parking lot A, B, or C closest to it? Once you’re inside, should you take the yellow, blue, or green elevators?

It doesn’t help that online business listings are set up mainly for local businesses like restaurants that have one building and one phone number. Yet online business listings are where consumers go to find out how to get places — including to your sprawling hospital campus.

What if Google has misinformation? Or at best, inadequate information? “If Google believes all your services across your large suburban campus are inside the hospital building, that’s where they send all your patients,” says Megan Yezak, marketing manager at MidMichigan Health. “Our patients could end up a mile from where they need to be.”

To correct misinformation, Yezak and MidMichigan’s business listings partner Geonetric are working actively with Google to educate the tech giant on how to accurately present location information.

Not only does this work benefit patients, it is helping MidMichigan rise to the top of the search engine results page, above even the biggest aggregators.

Learn more, including how Yezak and her team corrected a disastrous Google error affecting their emergency department: MidMichigan’s Search Engine Strategy Helps Patients Find Their Way

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President