Four months ago your clinic signed with an agency that promised to make you easier to find online. The invoice arrives every month. So does a cheerful email saying things are “progressing well”. Yet the front desk is not booking noticeably more new patients, and nobody at the clinic can say what has actually been done. It is a common story, and it is avoidable. A clinic director does not need to understand how the work is done to check that it is being done. You need three things: dated evidence, figures you own, and an honest count of the enquiries that come in.
Why checking is a management job
In a private clinic, every pound or euro of spend competes with equipment, a new nurse, a refurbished waiting room or a locum. A visibility budget that produces nothing is not just wasted money; it is the ultrasound you did not buy or the consultant you did not hire. That is why oversight cannot be handed entirely to the agency marking its own homework.
The difficulty is that visibility work is invisible in a way building work is not. You cannot walk past and see the wall going up. So it matters to agree, before signing, what will be shown, how often, and in which tools. If that is where you are now, our guide to the questions a clinic should ask before signing will help you frame the contract.
Check one: a dated report, every week
A serious partner tells you what was delivered, when, and what changed as a result. Not a glossy deck once a quarter, but a dated, regular report you can compare week on week.
What you should find in it is straightforward:
- What went live since the last report, with a date and a link you can open yourself.
- How the clinic's presence is moving on the searches that matter to you: your specialties, your area, your town.
- What comes next, so you can check the following week that it happened.
A report written in jargon that nobody at the practice understands is not a report; it is a smokescreen. You should be able to read it in five minutes between appointments. Our guide on what a weekly visibility report should show goes into more detail.
Check two: figures in tools you own
This is the most important rule and the one most often skipped. The figures that measure your visibility should live in Google accounts that belong to the clinic, not to the agency. Google offers a free tool, Search Console, that shows how often your site appears in searches and how many people click through. The clinic should own it, and you should be able to log in and look whenever you like.
Why does this matter so much? Because a screenshot sent by a supplier can be selected, cropped and taken out of context. An account you own does not flatter: you see the whole curve, the good weeks and the flat ones. And if you ever change provider, the history stays with you.
Warning signs
Be wary if the agency will not give you access, says the accounts are “in our name for convenience”, shows only flattering figures with nothing to compare them against, or talks endlessly about impressions and views without ever mentioning patient enquiries. Be equally wary of anyone who promised you the top position: nobody controls what Google or an AI assistant decides.
Check three: patient enquiries
Reports and curves tell you whether the clinic is becoming visible. Only enquiries tell you whether that visibility is worth paying for. And this measure is yours to keep, because only your team sees who walks in or calls.
It needs no complicated software. Ask whoever handles bookings to put one question to every new patient: “How did you hear about us?” Log the answer in a simple spreadsheet. Do the same for web forms, emails and messages from people who did not know you before. Within a few weeks you will know how many new patients found you through a search or on the suggestion of an AI assistant, and which treatments or specialties brought them in.
This protects you both ways. It stops you paying for nothing, and it stops you cancelling too early something that has started working without anyone noticing.
The right timetable for judging
Visibility work cannot be fairly judged after three weeks. Early signals usually appear within a few weeks, and progress becomes clear with consistency. A measured review at three months is the right moment for a first serious assessment: what was delivered, what your own tools show, what the enquiry log says. Our guide on what a clinic should expect at 3, 6 and 12 months gives you the milestones.
How Traffic Engine submits to these checks
Traffic Engine, Kolonell's visibility service, is built to be checked by a director with no time to waste. You receive a dated report every week. Results are tracked in your own Search Console. There is a measured review at three months. And the guarantee is plain: what your plan includes goes live on schedule, or the following month is free. Kolonell guarantees delivery and measurement, not what Google or an AI assistant decides.
You start with a Visibility Audit at €690, credited in full against the €1,500 setup if you go ahead within 30 days, then a monthly plan from €1,100 on a 12-month commitment. Each industry is capped at 3 seats per area. See the Traffic Engine offer, including the curves from Kolonell's own website, where the approach was applied first.
What you can do this week
If you already work with an agency, ask for access to your site's Search Console and for the latest dated report. How they react will tell you a lot. If you have no partner yet, start with the free website score to see where you stand, and put the question “how did you hear about us?” into your front-desk routine today.