Legal and financial searches split three ways: by practice area, by office and by person. 'Family lawyer', 'probate solicitor' and 'accountant for contractors' can each show a different local pack, lawyers and financial planners can hold Google profiles in their own names, and the research questions clients ask first, such as how probate works or what a divorce costs, can be answered by an AI Overview before any firm appears. SearchOps tracks all three for your firm, along with what ChatGPT and Gemini say when a client asks who to hire.
The problem
Google's guidelines treat lawyers and financial planners as individual practitioners who can have their own Business Profiles, with titles such as Esq. or CFA, as long as they can be contacted at the office during stated hours. A mid-sized firm's visibility is therefore spread across a profile for each office and one for each public-facing lawyer or adviser, and each can appear for different searches. Tracking only the firm name misses most of that picture.
Each practice area can show a different set of firms, so strength in conveyancing says nothing about employment law.
Research searches about legal and money problems can bring up AI Overviews that cite a few sources before any firm is listed.
Professional conduct rules limit what you can say in a public reply to a client's review.
Advertising rules for lawyers, such as the American Bar Association's model rules on claiming to be a certified specialist, apply to profile descriptions as much as to your website.
Questions SearchOps answers
These five questions decide where a firm's marketing budget should go next, practice area by practice area. Each one is answered by data SearchOps collects for every office and profile.
01Practice areas
Track each practice area as its own keyword in each office's town, such as 'personal injury lawyer Houston', 'probate solicitor Bristol' or 'small business accountant Calgary'. Google Search Visibility shows your position in web results and the Map Pack, and whether AI Overviews link to you, on desktop and mobile.
A clear view of the work your visibility supports
Used in this step
02Offices
Geo-grid scans show each office's Google Maps position across the area it serves, with the firms ahead of it at each point. Firms with several offices see each one on its own, so a strong head office doesn't hide a weak branch.
Office-by-office coverage, and the local firms you compete with
Used in this step
03AI answers
SearchOps asks ChatGPT and Gemini the questions clients ask before they call, such as which employment lawyers in the city handle dismissal cases, or which accountants work with contractors. You see how often your firm is recommended, the firms named instead, how your firm is described, and the directories, publications and review sites the answers cite.
Your share of AI recommendations, practice area by practice area
Used in this step
04Reputation
Reviews from connected Google profiles arrive in one inbox, with sentiment grouped by topic such as communication, cost and outcome. The reviews view compares your rating and review count with the firms from your map scans, and the agent drafts replies for you to check against your professional rules before anything is posted.
A reputation you can measure against your local market
Used in this step
05Enquiries
Connect each office's Google Business Profile to see calls, website clicks and direction requests, and the searches that showed the listing. Connect Search Console too, and you can see which practice-area searches already bring people to your site and which sit just off page one.
Enquiry signals you can tie to each office and practice area
The toolkit
Practice-area rankings on every Google surface, map coverage for each office, profiles for the firm and its people, ChatGPT and Gemini answers, and client reviews, in one place. SearchOps measures and reports; nothing is published to Google unless you send it.
Also working for you
Before and after
Use cases
Illustrative examples from law firms, accountancy practices and financial advisers, and the kind of answer SearchOps gives.
Employment law firmChicago, Illinois
Rank tracking for 'wrongful termination lawyer Chicago' shows the firm on page two of web results and absent from the Map Pack, while an AI Overview cites guides from two rival firms. AI visibility checks show ChatGPT naming the same two firms. The gap is specific to one practice area, and the cited sources show what the rivals publish that the firm doesn't.
Accountancy practiceAuckland, New Zealand
Scans for 'small business accountant' across the suburbs show the practice holding the Map Pack near its office but losing the wider area to two central firms with far more reviews. Tracking the same search over the following months shows whether a steady flow of new reviews moves that boundary.
Conveyancing solicitors, three officesYorkshire, UK
Each office is tracked as its own location. Scans and rank checks for 'conveyancing solicitor' in each town show two offices appearing strongly and the third missing from the Map Pack, and its profile shows fewer calls and direction requests than the others. The firm can focus on one office instead of reworking all three.
Independent financial plannerVancouver, Canada
AI visibility checks ask ChatGPT and Gemini for fee-only retirement planners in Vancouver. The planner is named in some answers and described accurately, but the answers lean on a directory profile that is out of date. Updating that listing is a small change to what the assistants read.
Choosing a plan
Plans scale with the offices and the lawyer or adviser profiles you track, and whether a marketing team or an agency works on the account. Every plan includes every tracking tool.
For a single-office firm
For a firm with several offices or individual profiles
For larger firms, networks and their marketing agencies
FAQ
The same platform, set up for a different kind of business.
