Posted By Dwayne McGowan | May 20, 2026
Local search has quietly split into two systems. Most practices are only optimized for one of them.
Ten years ago, a patient looking for a new dermatologist in a specific town did one thing: they typed “dermatologist near me” into Google, scanned the first page of results, and called whichever listing looked most credible. That was the game. Practices that ranked for local searches won. Practices that didn’t, lost.
That game still exists. But there is now a second one running alongside it — and ...