When a patient searches for a clinic near them, the first thing Google tends to show is not a website but a panel: a name, a pin on a map, opening hours, a phone number and a row of reviews. That panel is the Google Business Profile, and the practice controls what it says. Setting it up well and reading it through once a month is the simplest local search work a practice can do.
Key points
- A profile is for a place where patients are seen in person; a doctor there may have their own as well.
- Name, address, phone number and hours must match the website exactly.
- Choose the fewest, most specific categories, and set attributes patients rely on, such as a step-free entrance.
- Ask for reviews, never reward them, and reply without confirming that anyone was a patient.
- Once a month, read the profile as a patient would and correct what has drifted.
Who may claim a listing
Google’s guidelines give a profile to a business with a physical location that customers can visit: for a practice, the place where patients are seen. A virtual office or a mailbox address does not qualify.
Google treats doctors and dentists as individual practitioners: one may have a profile of their own if they are public-facing and can be contacted directly at the verified location during the stated hours. Where several share an address, the organisation keeps the profile for the location and each practitioner’s profile carries only their own name and title. One practitioner, one profile, however many specialties; support staff get none.
The fields that matter
Most of the profile is a form, and most of the harm comes from filling it loosely.
- Name. The real-world name, as on the sign and the website: no specialty words, town, tagline or phone number inside it. A practitioner’s profile may carry a title such as Dr.
- Address. Precise and real; in a shared building the practice’s name must be on the signage and someone must be there during the listed hours.
- Hours. The hours patients can actually come in, with special hours for public holidays and closures; a practice that sees patients by appointment only should not list regular hours.
- Phone. A local number that rings at that location and is under the practice’s control, not a call centre or premium line.
- Website. The page that represents the listing: the practice’s home page, or the doctor’s own page for a practitioner; no redirecting links.
- Categories and services. A primary category that completes “this business is a”, as specific as the list allows, then as few additional ones as honestly apply; Google says categories affect local ranking and are not keywords. List the services the website lists.
- Attributes. Details that vary by category; the accessibility set includes a wheelchair-accessible entrance (about a metre wide, with no steps or with a ramp), toilet, seating, parking and lift. Set what is true.
Photographs of the premises
A few plain photographs do a job no text does: the front door from the street, the reception, a consulting room. Keep them current, and leave people out unless they have agreed to be shown; Google’s content policy treats a recognisable face posted without consent as personal information.
The profile and the website must agree
Google reads both. Name, address, phone number and hours on the profile should match the website’s contact page and footer character for character; a practice that writes its name two ways is asking a machine to guess whether they are the same place.
The website can say the same in its code: local business structured data, a block of labels in the schema.org vocabulary that names the practice, its address, phone number, hours and web address, and the most specific type that fits, such as a medical clinic or a dentist. Google asks for the name and address at least and is clear that the labels make a page eligible for richer results without promising them. The post on what a private practice website needs covers that page; the one on what llms.txt does for a practice website covers the same facts as AI assistants read them.
Reviews on the profile
Reviews live on the profile, and Google’s rules are strict. You may ask a patient for a review, and Google gives you a link and a QR code. You may not offer anything in return, ask for a particular rating or wording, press patients to review on the premises, or have staff or relatives write reviews: Google’s policy calls rewarded reviews fake engagement and reviews from employees a conflict of interest.
Replying is where a practice can go wrong. A reply is public, and whether a named person is or was a patient is health data: the ICO counts information collected when someone registers for or uses a health service as data concerning health. So a reply thanks or apologises in general terms, never confirms that the reviewer attended, never mentions a condition, an appointment or a treatment, and invites them to contact the practice directly. Reviews on the website itself are a separate question, which the post on patient reviews on a medical website goes through.
Posts and questions
Owners and managers of a profile can publish short posts and answer the questions the public asks on it. Posts suit plain news: changed hours over a holiday, a new clinician, a service now offered; each says what the website says and no more. Answer questions about parking, hours and booking, and never anything about an individual’s care.
What to check each month
Open the profile on a phone, as a patient would.
- Are the hours right for the coming month, including any public holiday?
- Does the phone number ring at reception, and does the link open the right page?
- Has anything changed that you did not change: the name, a category, an attribute?
- Has every new review had a reply, and every new question an answer?
- Are the photographs still true to the premises?
- Does the website still give the same name, address, hours and number?
Common questions
Does each doctor need a profile as well as the clinic?
Not necessarily. A practitioner may have one if they are public-facing and reachable at the location during the stated hours; the clinic keeps the profile for the address.
Can we ask patients to leave a review?
Yes. Ask, give the link, and stop there: no reward, no request for a particular wording or score, no reviews from staff or relatives, and no pressing anyone while they are still in the building.
What should we say to an unfair review?
Reply once, briefly and courteously, without confirming that the person was a patient or saying anything about their care, and offer a direct way to raise the matter with the practice. A review that breaks Google’s content policy is a matter for Google, not for the reply.
This is part of the search and AI discovery work on every website we look after.
References
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help — support.google.com · Accessed 2026-10-11
- Manage your business category, Google Business Profile Help — support.google.com · Accessed 2026-10-11
- Manage your business attributes, Google Business Profile Help — support.google.com · Accessed 2026-10-11
- Tips to get more reviews, Google Business Profile Help — support.google.com · Accessed 2026-10-11
- Prohibited and restricted content, Google Maps User Generated Content Policy Help — support.google.com · Accessed 2026-10-11
- Manage your Business Profile owners and managers, Google Business Profile Help — support.google.com · Accessed 2026-10-11
- Local Business (LocalBusiness) structured data, Google Search Central — developers.google.com · Accessed 2026-10-11
- What is special category data?, Information Commissioner's Office — ico.org.uk · Accessed 2026-10-11