Tony Wang8 min readGoogle Has Two Categories for Physical Therapy. They Give Opposite Answers.
Two Google categories for the same service, near-identical size, opposite composition. Pick wrong and you get the wrong owner entirely.
Twenty-eight posts into mapping business ownership from listing data, the recurring hazard has been picking the wrong query. This one is about picking the wrong category — and it is a subtler trap, because both candidate categories look correct, are almost exactly the same size, and return plausible-looking results.
Two categories, opposite answers
| Measure | physical_therapist | physical_therapy_clinic |
|---|---|---|
| US listings | 26,539 | 25,931 |
| Unique domains per 200-record sample | 161 | 166 |
| Individual-practitioner listings | 19.5% | 1.0% |
| Largest domain | McFarland Clinic (health system) — 4.5% | Select Physical Therapy (chain) — 4.0% |
| Second largest | Aurora Health Care (health system) — 4.0% | Athletico (chain) — 4.0% |
| Athletico's share | 2.5% | 4.0% |
Nothing about the two names signals this. physical_therapist and physical_therapy_clinic both read as reasonable tags for an outpatient PT practice — and at 26,539 and 25,931 listings they are close enough in size that neither looks like the obvious "real" one. But their contents diverge sharply: practitioner-named listings and hospital-system PT departments concentrate in the first, branded chain clinics in the second.
Summing the siblings recovers the truth
The cleanest proof runs through a single brand. Running a category facet on q="Athletico" shows exactly where its listings live:
| Google category | Athletico listings |
|---|---|
| physical_therapy_clinic | 641 |
| physical_therapist | 181 |
| physiotherapy_center | 60 |
| physiotherapist | 17 |
| sports_medicine_clinic | 10 |
| All others (soccer_club, medical_clinic, occupational_therapist, etc.) | ~19 |
| Total | ~928 |
Summed, that is ~928 listings against a company that says it has more than 900 locations — a close match. Queried in physical_therapist alone, Athletico returns 181, an undercount of roughly 5x. The sibling-summing technique works; the danger is not knowing you need it.
The largest owner runs eight brands
Once the clinic category is sampled and brands are grouped by parent company, the leader is not a household name:
| Owner | Share of sample | Brands seen |
|---|---|---|
| Select Medical | 6.0% | Select Physical Therapy, NovaCare, KORT |
| Athletico | 4.0% | Athletico |
| ATI Physical Therapy | 2.5% | ATI |
| FYZICAL | 1.5% | FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers |
| H2 Health | 1.5% | H2 Health |
Select Medical's outpatient division operates roughly 1,900 locations across at least eight brands: Select Physical Therapy, NovaCare Rehabilitation, Kessler Rehabilitation Center, KORT, Physio, Saco Bay Physical Therapy, First Choice Rehabilitation, and Champion Sports Medicine. Three of those appeared in our 200-record sample; the others would push its true share higher. It is the same multi-banner structure this series has now found in auto repair, fast food, and childcare — a single owner behind names that read as independent competitors.
Behind them sits an active private-equity field: industry trackers count 18 platforms currently acquiring PT practices, with the top 10 holding 59.3% of all PE-affiliated PT locations.
A sharper rule for the practitioner-listing artifact
Our urgent care study found that a facility-counting category can be inflated by operators publishing one listing per provider — in Illinois, half of all sampled urgent care listings were individual physicians. Physical therapy refines that rule considerably.
| Category | Practitioner-named listings |
|---|---|
| urgent_care_center (Illinois) | 50% |
| physical_therapist | 19.5% |
| dentist | 9.0% |
| physical_therapy_clinic | 1.0% |
The artifact is not a uniform property of healthcare categories — it tracks whether the category is named for a person or for a place. physical_therapist runs at 19.5%; its sibling physical_therapy_clinic, covering the same service, runs at 1.0%. That is a far more actionable rule than "expect this in professional services": prefer the facility-named sibling category whenever one exists, and check the practitioner rate before trusting any count as a facility count.
How we did this, and the caveats
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Category totals | datasets_google_map_facets on category=physical_therapist (26,539) and category=physical_therapy_clinic (25,931), country=United States |
| Ownership samples | Two independent 200-record samples, one per category, has_website=true, sort=updated_at_desc, classified by website domain |
| Brand category spread | Category facet run on q="Athletico" across all categories |
| Practitioner-artifact rate | Business names pattern-matched for trailing clinical credentials in each sample |
| Contamination check | q="Physical" returns 12,016 (45.3% of physical_therapist) |
| External figures | Athletico and Select Medical company disclosures; industry PT roll-up trackers |
Caveats worth stating plainly: all shares are sample-relative, from 200-record recency-sorted samples, not national extrapolations. Select Medical's 6.0% counts only the three brands that appeared in the sample — its true share is higher, and we do not estimate by how much. The ~928 Athletico figure is a listing count, not a location count; it matches the company's stated 900+ locations closely, but a third-party count put its storefronts at 700 in June 2026, so treat it as corroboration rather than precision. q="ATI" returned only 34 in the therapist category and is not used as a brand count anywhere here — short acronyms tokenize poorly. And as with every study on this dataset: it's live-growing, so a re-pull months from now may show different totals.
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Frequently asked questions
Why do Google's two physical therapy categories give different answers?
Because they contain compositionally different populations. physical_therapist (26,539 US listings) is dominated by hospital-system PT departments and individual practitioners — 19.5% of sampled listings are named for a person. physical_therapy_clinic (25,931 listings) is dominated by branded national chains, with only 1.0% practitioner-named listings. Query the first and you conclude hospital systems dominate PT; query the second and you conclude national chains do.
Who is the largest owner of US physical therapy clinics?
Select Medical, which operates roughly 1,900 outpatient locations under at least eight brands: Select Physical Therapy, NovaCare Rehabilitation, Kessler Rehabilitation Center, KORT, Physio, Saco Bay Physical Therapy, First Choice Rehabilitation, and Champion Sports Medicine. Three of those brands appeared in a 200-record sample of the clinic category, totaling 6.0%.
How do you get a chain's real listing count when categories fragment?
Sum the sibling categories. Athletico appears 641 times in physical_therapy_clinic, 181 in physical_therapist, 60 in physiotherapy_center, 17 in physiotherapist, and 10 in sports_medicine_clinic — about 928 total, closely matching the company's stated 900+ locations. Querying only physical_therapist returns 181, an undercount of roughly 5x.
When should you expect listings for individual practitioners rather than facilities?
It tracks whether the category is named for a person or a place. Practitioner-named listings run at 19.5% in physical_therapist but only 1.0% in physical_therapy_clinic, 9.0% in dentist, and 50% in a sampled state for urgent_care_center. The practical rule: prefer the facility-named sibling category whenever one exists, and check the practitioner rate before treating any count as a facility count.
How consolidated is US physical therapy?
Industry trackers count 18 active private-equity platforms currently acquiring PT practices, with the top 10 holding 59.3% of all PE-affiliated PT locations. In the clinic-category sample, the largest identifiable owners were Select Medical (6.0%), Athletico (4.0%), ATI (2.5%), FYZICAL (1.5%), and H2 Health (1.5%).