Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Yelp and Other Listings: A Citation Cleanup for Chiropractors

A citation cleanup for a chiropractic practice means finding every listing that names your office, making the name, address, phone number and website on each one match your Google Business Profile, and closing or merging the duplicates. For most practices that covers three groups: health directories such as Healthgrades and Zocdoc, the provider directories your insurers keep, and general sites such as Yelp, Apple Maps and Bing. The first pass is slow. After that it's a short check twice a year.

The reason to bother is the patient who finds the wrong listing. A phone number that rings at your old suite, a map pin at the address you left three years ago, or a profile for an associate who no longer works there can each send a ready-to-book patient somewhere else. Conflicting details also give Google less reason to be confident about which version of your practice is current.

Step 1: Write down the one correct version

Before you touch a single directory, put the correct details in one document the whole office can see.

• Practice name, exactly as it appears on your sign and your Google Business Profile. Google's Business Profile guidelines require the name to match the real-world name, and adding keywords to it is against the guidelines and can get a profile suspended. Use that same name everywhere else.
• Address, including the suite number, written one way. Small format differences such as "Ste" and "Suite" are not worth losing sleep over. A wrong suite number or an old street address is.
• Main phone number, the one the front desk answers. If you use separate tracking numbers for ads, keep them off directory listings.
• Website address, the full https version of the page you want each listing to send people to.
• Hours, each doctor's name with the credentials they use publicly, and the email address that owns your directory logins.

That last item matters more than it looks. If listings were claimed with a former office manager's personal email, getting access back can take weeks. Use a practice-owned address for every login from now on.

Step 2: Find what is already out there

Search for your practice several ways and record every result in a spreadsheet: the site, the listing URL, the name, address and phone shown, who controls the login, and what needs fixing.

• Your practice name in quotes, with and without your town.
• Your current address, and every address the practice has used before.
• Every phone number the practice has used, including old fax numbers that got listed as phones.
• Each doctor's name plus "chiropractor", for current and former associates.

Sort what you find into three groups, because each one gets fixed a different way.

Health directories. Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Vitals, WebMD's provider directory and similar sites often hold a profile for each doctor as well as, or instead of, one for the practice. Some of them build provider records from public data such as the NPI registry, so check that each doctor's NPI record shows the current practice location. Otherwise an old address can keep coming back after you fix it.

Insurance directories. Every plan you are in network with lists you in its own provider directory, and patients use those directories to check whether you take their plan. Changes there usually go through the insurer's provider portal or whoever handles your credentialing, not a public "suggest an edit" button. These listings are easy to forget because nobody at the practice ever looks at them.

General directories and maps. Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, your Facebook page, the local chamber of commerce and any community sites that list local businesses. Apple Maps is worth claiming even if no patient has mentioned it, because it is the default map app on iPhones.

Step 3: Check which listings show up in your own town

National lists of "top citation sites" are a weak guide to where your patients look. The directories that matter most are the ones that appear when someone near you searches for a chiropractor, and that varies from town to town. Check rather than assume.

On a phone, near the office, search:

• "chiropractor [your town]"
• "chiropractor near me"
• "chiropractor that takes [a plan you accept]"
• "[your practice name] reviews"

Note every directory that appears on the first page. Then repeat the searches from a neighboring town where you get patients. Those listings go to the top of the fix list, because patients see them before they reach your website. A directory that never appears for your town's searches can wait until the end.

Step 4: Clear duplicates after a move or an associate leaving

Most duplicates trace back to one of two events.

A move. Directories keep the old listing, and a second one can appear for the new address. Where you can, claim the old listing and update it instead of creating a new one, so its reviews and history stay attached where the site allows that. Where a duplicate already exists, each site has its own route: some let you mark a listing as moved or closed, some merge duplicates on request, and some only respond to a support ticket. Write down the date of every request, because some take weeks to process.

An associate leaving. Doctor profiles on health directories often show the practice's address and phone number. After a doctor leaves, those profiles can keep sending calls to your front desk or show patients a doctor they can no longer book. The profile may belong to the doctor rather than the practice, so the cleanest fix is to ask the doctor to update it to their new location. If that doesn't happen, contact the directory and ask what it allows. Don't log in to a profile that isn't yours.

Step 5: Fix in a sensible order and keep a log

1. Your Google Business Profile, since it is the version everything else should match.
2. The directories that appeared on page one for your town's searches.
3. Your insurers' provider directories, and each doctor's NPI record.
4. Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp and Facebook, if they weren't already covered.
5. Everything else on the spreadsheet.

Keep the spreadsheet after the cleanup. Add columns for the date checked, the date fixed and the login owner, then check the top twenty rows twice a year and after any change to your address, phone number or doctors.

While you are inside these listings you will see reviews, including on health directories you may never have opened before. If you reply to any of them, don't confirm that the reviewer is a patient. HIPAA treats patient information as protected, and a public reply that confirms someone is a patient can be a disclosure.

The same job in another trade

Citation work isn't specific to healthcare. In the Florida roofing case, citation building and cleanup on home-service directories such as Yelp, Angi and Houzz was one part of a Golden package campaign that also rebuilt the contractor's Google Business Profile, targeted hyperlocal keywords, set up a review-request process and earned locally relevant links. From March to September 2025, qualified high-value leads rose 600% and the profile reached #1 in the Google Map Pack. The cleanup was one piece among several, so we don't credit those results to it alone, and a practice's directories are different from a roofer's. The task itself, one correct set of details everywhere people look, carries over.

Where to go from here

Citations are one part of local search for a practice. Our page on local SEO for chiropractors covers the rest, from the Business Profile to reviews and location pages, and explains how we handle that work.