Google Business Profile for doctors: the complete setup guide

If you only fix one thing about your practice’s online presence this month, make it your Google Business Profile. For most medical practices it drives more local visibility than the entire website, and it is almost always the most neglected asset.

The reason is structural. When someone searches for a doctor nearby, Google shows a map with three local businesses above the normal results. That block captures a large share of clicks, and which three practices appear in it is decided mostly by your profile, not your website.

Start with the category

The primary category is the single most consequential field, and it is the one practices most often get wrong.

Google offers specific medical categories: Dermatologist, Pediatrician, Orthopedic surgeon, Dental clinic, and many more. Choosing the generic Doctor or Medical clinic when a specific category exists costs visibility for the searches that matter most.

Pick the single most accurate primary category. Then add secondary categories only where you genuinely provide that service, a dermatology practice offering cosmetic treatments can legitimately add a relevant secondary category, but padding the list with services you do not provide dilutes the signal rather than broadening it.

Complete every field, then complete it again

Profile completeness is a ranking factor and most practices stop at about sixty per cent. The fields that get skipped:

• Services. List them individually. Each is a term someone searches.
• Attributes. “Accepts new patients”, “Wheelchair accessible”, “Online appointments”, languages spoken. These appear as filters in search and directly affect who sees you.
• Business description. 750 characters. Write it for a patient deciding, not for a search engine.
• Opening date. Minor, but it contributes to completeness.
• Appointment link. Point it directly at your booking page, not your homepage.

Hours, including holidays

Wrong hours cause two kinds of damage. The obvious one is a patient arriving at a closed office. The less obvious one is that Google demotes listings it has reason to distrust, and user reports of incorrect hours are exactly that kind of signal.

Set your regular hours accurately, then set special hours for every holiday in advance. If you close for lunch, reflect it. If you offer extended hours on particular days, that is a genuine differentiator and it belongs here.

Photographs of your actual practice

Stock photography is worse than no photography. Patients use profile photos to recognise the building when they arrive, and a generic image of a smiling model in a white coat communicates nothing except that you did not bother.

What to include:

• The exterior of the building, from the direction patients approach
• The entrance, especially if it is hard to find
• The waiting room as it actually looks
• The parking situation
• Your actual providers and staff

Add photos regularly rather than all at once. Recency is a signal of an actively managed listing.

Reviews: the part with rules

Reviews are the highest-leverage element of local ranking and the one where practices most often get themselves into trouble.

What works: asking every patient, at the right moment, through a simple automated flow. Recency matters more than volume, a steady trickle of recent reviews outperforms a large pile of old ones. Respond to every review, positive and negative, professionally and without ever discussing clinical details.

What will hurt you: review gating, asking patients how they feel first and only inviting the happy ones to post, violates Google’s policies and, since the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews took effect, carries federal exposure with civil penalties. The same applies to offering anything of value in exchange for a review, and to writing them yourself.

The short version: ask everyone, incentivise nobody, and respond to all of it.

On responding to negative reviews in healthcare

Every practice gets one eventually, and healthcare has a constraint other businesses do not: you cannot confirm that the reviewer is a patient without potentially disclosing protected health information. Practices have been penalised for responding with clinical detail.

A safe response acknowledges the feedback generally, does not confirm or deny any treatment relationship, and moves the conversation offline. Something close to: “We take feedback seriously and would like to understand what happened. Please contact our office manager at [number].” That is all. Never more.

What to do this week

1. Claim and verify the profile if you have not
2. Set the most specific primary category available
3. Fill in every field, especially services and attributes
4. Add holiday hours for the next twelve months
5. Replace stock photography with real photographs
6. Set up a review request that goes to every patient

None of this requires a developer, and for most practices it produces visible movement within two to four weeks, considerably faster than any change to the website itself.