Google Business Profile for your practice
For a local practice, your Google listing is seen far more often than your website. It is free, you control it, and most practices leave it half-filled and years out of date.
For a local practice, your Google listing is seen far more often than your website — it is what appears in Maps, in the panel beside search results, and on a phone asking for “dentist near me”. It is free, you control it, and most practices leave it half-filled and years out of date.
Claim it first
A listing for your practice almost certainly already exists, generated automatically or added by a patient. Claiming it is how you take control. Search for your practice name and address, and look for “Own this business?” or “Claim this business”.
Verification is usually by phone, email, video or postcard, depending on the category — healthcare listings often get the stricter route. Have your practice registration details to hand.
The details that matter
| Name | Your real practice name, exactly as it appears on your signage and website. Do not append keywords — “Smith Dental – Best Dentist Apopka” violates the guidelines and can get you suspended. |
|---|---|
| Category | The primary category carries real ranking weight. Be specific — “Pediatric dentist” rather than “Dentist” if that is what you are. Add secondary categories for other services. |
| Address and phone | Must match your website and other listings character for character. “Suite 200” and “Ste 200” are different to a search engine. Use a local number, not a call-tracking number that appears nowhere else. |
| Hours | Including holiday hours. Wrong hours are the number one cause of a bad first impression — someone drives over and finds you closed. |
| Website link | Point at the relevant page. For a multi-location practice, link each listing to that location’s page, not the homepage. |
| Services and attributes | Fill these in properly. “Wheelchair accessible”, “accepts new patients”, languages spoken, insurance accepted — these answer the questions people actually search for. |
Photos
Listings with photos get materially more engagement. Add: the exterior as it appears from the road (this is how people find you), the entrance, reception, a treatment room, and the team. Refresh them when you redecorate. Ten good photos beat forty poor ones.
Reviews — carefully
Reviews strongly influence both ranking and choice. Healthcare adds a constraint that other businesses do not have:
A response that stays safe: “Thank you for taking the time to share this. We take all feedback seriously and would like to understand more — please contact our office manager at [number].” Never identify, never confirm, never rebut details publicly. Take it offline.
On soliciting reviews: you may ask patients to leave one, but do not offer incentives and do not filter so that only happy patients are asked. Ask everyone, consistently, and ask soon after the visit.
Keeping it alive
- Post updates occasionally — a new provider, a new service, seasonal hours. Posts are also the fastest way to communicate during a website outage.
- Answer the Q&A section. Anyone can answer questions on your listing, including people who are not you. Seed it with the real questions you get by phone.
- Check it quarterly. Google applies user-suggested edits automatically — hours and even addresses can change without you doing anything.
- Watch the insights for how people find you and what they do next. Calls and direction requests are the numbers that matter for a practice.
FAQ
Should each provider have their own listing?
Individual practitioner listings are permitted alongside the practice listing, and can help for name searches. They must be genuinely distinct — a real practitioner, their own name, correct category. Done carelessly it creates duplicates that hurt more than they help.
Someone left a review that is factually false.
You can request removal if it breaches Google’s policies — but success is inconsistent and slow. Respond publicly in generic terms, resolve it privately, and keep collecting genuine reviews so one outlier carries less weight. Do not respond with clinical details, however unfair it feels.
Our listing disappeared.
Usually a suspension — commonly triggered by keywords added to the business name, an address change, or a category change. Check for a notification in the dashboard and use the reinstatement process. Tell us and we can help work through it.