When you run a Local SEO Heatmap search for certain mental health keywords — such as Borderline Personality Disorder — the heatmap may return unrelated business types (for example, banks or financial institutions) instead of mental health clinics. This can occur even when other similar keywords like Psychotherapy or Anxiety Therapy return accurate, relevant results in the same region.
This is a known issue caused by how Google interprets certain clinical or diagnostic terms as queries. The heatmap tool relies on Google's local search data, and Google sometimes misclassifies highly specific or diagnostic health terms — returning results based on ambiguous query intent rather than the expected business category.
The root cause involves two related factors:
Google query interpretation: Specific clinical terms like Borderline Personality Disorder are not always treated by Google as local business searches. Google may interpret them as informational queries and return unrelated or fallback results.
Local Pack eligibility: If Google does not associate a keyword with a local business category, the Local Pack (which the heatmap visualises) may not populate with the expected business type — or may populate with unrelated categories entirely.
This behaviour originates at the Google data level and is not a configuration error within Search Atlas. Our engineering team is aware of edge cases like this and continues to monitor heatmap data accuracy.
Test with broader or more common keywords first. Terms like Therapist Near Me, Psychotherapy, Mental Health Counseling, or Anxiety Therapy are more reliably interpreted by Google as local service searches and will return more accurate heatmap results.
Use condition-adjacent keywords instead of diagnostic terms. Rather than searching for the diagnosis itself, try keywords that describe the service — for example, BPD Therapy or Dialectical Behavior Therapy — which are more likely to surface relevant local providers.
Report persistent inaccuracies to our team. If you continue to see unexpected results for a keyword that you believe should return local business results, please contact our support team with the specific keyword, your target location, and a description of the results you are seeing so our team can investigate further.
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.