Rant: Lawyers who put 'personal injury' as their only practice area on Google

I keep seeing Edmonton law firms that list 'personal injury' as their sole practice area, but then their website talks about real estate and wills too. It's like they're afraid of using commas in their Google Business listing. I checked 12 firms last week and 8 of them had this problem. Google's algorithm is probably confused and showing them to the wrong clients. Has anyone else noticed this hurting their search rankings here?

3 comments

3 Comments

allen.kai1mo ago

Oh man, the "afraid of commas" bit really got me. It's like they think adding "real estate" to their Google listing will somehow jinx their injury cases or something. I swear half the lawyers in this town just copy-pasted "Personal Injury" because they saw it on someone else's page and figured it was the secret sauce for SEO. Then you click through and it's like, "Also we do divorces, DUIs, and your grandma's will for $50." Google's probably serving up their ad to some guy looking for a slip-and-fall lawyer while his neighbor gets a spam call about a probate lawyer instead. It's a mess.

lilya761mo ago

Clicked on one of these listings last month looking for help after a car accident. Turns out the firm mainly does real estate closings and wills, they just had "personal injury" slapped on their Google page to pull in more traffic. Waste of my time and a total bait and switch. Google's algorithm probably punishes this kind of thing eventually, but these firms don't care as long as they get the phone to ring right now. Honestly feels like they're just gaming the system and making it harder for people who actually need a real specialist to find one.

linda1141mo ago

Can't believe you actually sat down and checked 12 firms. That's way more patience than I got but yeah I've clicked on a few of those listings thinking I found a specialist and then nope, it's just another general practice hiding behind keywords. Drives me nuts.