If you've spent any time on social media as a chiropractor, you've probably been pitched a "hack" for ranking number one on Google Maps. Someone is always discovering a secret, and they're always willing to share it with you for a fee.

In this episode, Jerry breaks down a real example he came across recently: a guy claiming to rank well by paying people with burner phones to fake driving to his office, creating the illusion of traffic and interest. Jerry explains why this works in the short term, why Google's pattern detection catches it eventually, and what actually happens when it does, including the kind of shadow banning and blacklisting that is much harder to undo than it was to create.

He also walks through a second, more subtle example: incentivizing patients with raffles or contests to get them to post photos to your Google Business Profile. It sounds harmless on the surface, but Jerry explains why it crosses into the same bribery and incentivization territory that Google explicitly prohibits, even when the intent feels innocent.

Underneath both examples is the same core idea Jerry keeps coming back to on this podcast: relevance, proximity, and prominence are what actually build trust with Google and AI, and prominence in particular cannot be faked without consequences. He closes with a clear list of the basics that actually work, the unglamorous stuff that nobody wants to hear because it isn't a shortcut.

Topics Covered

Why "secret hacks" being sold to chiropractors on social media should make you cautious
The burner phone scheme: paying people to fake traveling to your office to manufacture fake interaction signals
How Google detects abnormal patterns and what happens when you get caught
Why Jerry would report a competitor gaming the system, and why that isn't "being a jerk"
The trust analogy: why undermining trust with Google works the same way as undermining trust with a person
The Google Business Profile photo raffle example and why incentivizing photo posts counts as bribery
The difference between asking a patient to share a photo and incentivizing them to
The real, unglamorous list of things that actually build prominence over time

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