Imagine a parent searching for “pediatrician near me” on their phone after work. Google shows a map and a short list of nearby practices, with ratings, hours and a button to call. The parent calls one of them. Whether your practice makes that list, and what it says when it does, depends a lot on your Google Business Profile (GBP).
Profiles also drift out of date. Hours change and providers come and go, so a profile that was accurate two years ago can be wrong today. If the phone number or hours on Google are wrong, the patient who relied on them may end up calling another practice.
1. Accurate Profiles Show Up More Often
Local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, according to Google. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the person searching. Prominence is how well known your practice is, measured partly by the websites that link to you and by your reviews.
You cannot move your building, and there’s no way to pay Google for a better local ranking. That leaves relevance and prominence, and relevance starts with the basics. Medical practices with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results. A profile with wrong information might not appear for relevant searches in your area at all.
Start by verifying the profile, which tells Google you are authorized to represent the practice. Then fill it in: full address, regular hours, holiday hours, photos and the right categories and description. Pick categories that complete the sentence “This business is a…”, and use as few as you can.
Watch the practice name too. It should match the name on your signage and your website. Google’s guidelines list taglines, service descriptions and location details as things a name cannot include, and adding them can get a profile suspended.
If your profile reads “Smith Family Medicine | Best Doctor in Boise” and your sign doesn’t; change it. Services belong in your categories, description and metadata.
2. Each Provider Can Have a Profile
Doctors count as individual practitioners under the same guidelines. A doctor who sees patients at a verified location during stated hours can have a dedicated profile, and titles like Dr. or MD are allowed in the name. Support staff shouldn’t have profiles, and one doctor shouldn’t have several for different specialties.
Naming depends on how many providers work at the location. With several, the practice keeps its own profile and each provider’s profile uses the provider’s name only, without the practice name. A solo provider at a branded practice shares one profile with it, named “[Practice name]: [Provider name]”.
Patients who were referred to a doctor may search for that doctor by name. With an accurate provider profile, that search leads to your office. People searching for a specific provider can check which insurance networks the provider might accept, and the providers can list the languages spoken at their office.
Hospitals have one more option. Departments that serve the public as separate units can have profiles too. Their names and categories have to differ from the main hospital’s, and they list their own hours. The example in the guidelines is “Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Dermatology.”
3. Reviews Help You Rank, Within Google’s Rules
More reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, and reviews show next to your profile on Maps and Search. The simplest way to get more is to ask every patient. You can create a review link or QR code to make that easy. Patients have to be signed in to a Google account to leave a review, though it doesn’t have to be a Gmail address.
Offering something in exchange, like a discount or a free service, is against the rules. Google’s Map Policy also prohibits discouraging negative reviews or selectively asking for positive ones. That rules out a survey that forwards only five-star answers to Google.
4. A Review Reply Can Become a Privacy Problem
Google’s tips for replying suggest addressing reviewers by name and responding to their specific feedback. That’s fine advice for a restaurant. However, a medical practice has HIPAA to consider.
Manasa Health Center provides adult and child psychiatric services in New Jersey. In 2023, the health center paid $30,000 to the HHS Office for Civil Rights and agreed to a corrective action plan. The complaint alleged the practice disclosed a patient’s protected health information when it responded to that patient’s negative online review.
A safer reply thanks the person and says nothing about whether they were seen or what happened. Then it gives the office phone number so the conversation can move somewhere private. The same Google tips recommend taking complicated situations to phone or email.
Decide who on your staff writes replies and what they cannot mention, and keep replying. A complaint with no answer stays on your profile for every patient who reads it later.
5. Your Profile Shows What Patients Do Next
Verified profiles come with a performance report. It shows how many people viewed your profile and the search terms that brought them there. It also counts calls, direction requests and clicks to your website. The numbers include both organic results and Google Ads, and search terms update at the start of each month.
Someone who taps the Call button on your profile may never open your website, so that call won’t appear in your website analytics. Check the report monthly. If a service or town you care about never shows up in the search terms, your profile and service pages need some work.
Here are two examples of a Google Business Profile. The first one is incomplete, and the second one has all of the information Google requires to rank.
This practice is fictitious and is only used as an example.
Getting Help With Your Profile
Google Business Profile optimization is part of the local SEO work Kardia does for medical practices like yours. For Madison Women’s Clinic, it was one piece of a plan that also included provider and testimonial videos, medical SEO and reviews.
