Google Business Profile for doctors: the complete setup guide

Why it matters for doctors

When a patient searches “dentist near me” or “skin specialist in Aliganj”, Google usually shows a map with three clinics before any website. Those three get most of the calls. Your Google Business Profile decides whether you're one of them.

Google says these results are based mainly on three things:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches what the patient searched for. In our experience, categories, services and your description drive this most.
• Distance: how far you are from the person searching, or from the area they named. You can't change this, which is why the other two matter so much.
• Prominence: how well known you are, based on things like reviews and how many websites mention and link to you.

For a clinic, the profile also does the job of a first consultation. Patients look at your photos, read your reviews, check whether you're open, and call from the same screen. Many never visit your website at all.

Which profile you need

Get this wrong and everything else suffers: two profiles split your reviews, or a doctor's profile outranks the clinic that pays the rent. Google has specific rules for healthcare practitioners:

A practitioner profile belongs to the doctor, not the clinic. That's useful for a consultant who may move one day, because reviews stay with the profile. For a clinic owner, it means a visiting doctor's profile can compete with yours. We cover these situations in detail for individual doctors, hospitals and clinic chains.

Check for an existing profile first

Before creating anything, search Google Maps for your clinic name, your own name and your phone number. Profiles for doctors are often created without them knowing: by a patient adding a place, by an earlier receptionist, by a previous agency, or for a clinic you left years ago.

• If a profile exists and nobody manages it, claim it and verify it.
• If someone else owns it, request access from business.google.com/add. The current owner gets three days to respond. If they don't, you may be able to claim it yourself; if they refuse, you can appeal.
• If there are duplicates, report the extra one as a duplicate on Google Maps. When Google merges them, the reviews are usually combined. In our experience, owner replies and some profile details don't always carry over. If you created the duplicate and it has no reviews, you can delete it. If it has reviews, ask Google support to merge it into the main profile instead, because deleting a profile deletes its reviews.

Create and verify

Go to business.google.com, add your clinic, choose the category and enter the address exactly as it appears on your registration documents. Then verify. Google chooses the verification method for you, and you can't change it. The options include phone or SMS, email, a live video call, a recorded video and, less often now, a postcard.

In our experience, most clinics now get a recorded video. Google's rules are strict: one continuous, unedited recording of at least 30 seconds, made and uploaded live from your phone. It's reviewed within about five business days. For a clinic, a video that passes usually shows:

1. The street outside, with a road sign, a landmark or neighbouring shops.
2. Your signboard, with the clinic name clearly readable and matching the profile name.
3. The entrance, then the walk inside to reception and the waiting area.
4. Proof you run the place: unlocking the consultation room, opening a staff-only cabinet, or the clinic software on the reception computer.

The reasons we see clinic verifications fail are nearly always the same: no permanent signboard, a signboard name that doesn't match the profile, a clinic inside a hospital or complex where the video can't show which door is yours, or a recording with cuts in it. Fix these before you record, because repeated failures make the next attempt harder.

Your profile name

Your profile name must be your real-world name: what's on your signboard, letterhead and registration. Doctors may use titles like “Dr”. What you can't add is anything else.

Here's why so many clinics break this rule anyway: industry surveys, including Whitespark's 2026 local ranking factors study, rank keywords in the business name among the strongest ranking signals. It works, until a competitor suggests an edit, or Google's systems notice, and the profile is suspended. If your registered clinic name genuinely includes a treatment, such as “City Dental and Implant Centre”, you can use it. Adding one that isn't on the signboard is the single most common reason we see clinic profiles suspended.

Categories

You choose one primary category and up to nine additional ones. The primary category matters most: Whitespark's 2026 survey of local SEO specialists ranks it the number one factor for Google Maps rankings. Google's own rule is simple: choose categories that complete the sentence “This business is a…”, not “This business has a…”, and use as few as possible.

Category names come from Google's list and can differ slightly by region. Always confirm in your profile editor. Changing a category can trigger verification again.

Two mistakes we see often: stuffing every loosely related category onto the profile, which blurs what you are, and choosing a broad category like Medical clinic when a specific one exists. A skin clinic listed as Medical clinic competes with every general practice in the city, and rarely wins.

Services, description and links

Services

Add every treatment you offer as a service. Google suggests some based on your category; add the rest as custom services. Keep names plain and specific (“Root canal treatment”, “Acne scar treatment”, “Home physiotherapy”) and write one or two lines about each. Service names can't include prices or phone numbers; there's a separate price field if you want to show one.

Services help you appear for treatment searches, and they're also what Google's AI reads when a patient asks whether you offer something. A treatment that isn't listed, for Google, might as well not exist.

Description

You get 750 characters. No links, and no offers or prices. A description that works for a clinic answers four things: who you are, what you treat, who the doctors are, and anything practical that sets you apart. For example:

Links

Add your website, and an appointment link if you take bookings: your own booking page, or the page on a booking platform you use. Google allows several links per type and lets you mark one as preferred. Test every link on a phone.

Products: a note for clinics

Google restricts pharmaceuticals, supplements and medical devices, and doesn't allow offers, prices or buy links for them. Clinics that dispense medicines or sell skincare should leave them out of the products section.

Hours

Set hours that match when patients can actually see a doctor, not when the building is open. If the doctor sits 10 to 1 and 5 to 8, show split hours. Industry surveys rank “open at the time of search” among the top five factors for Maps rankings, and many patients search in the evening, so accurate evening hours matter.

• Special hours: set them a week before Diwali, Holi, Eid and other holidays. Nothing costs more goodwill than a patient arriving at a locked clinic that Google said was open.
• More hours: some categories can add separate hours for specific services. They only show once regular hours are set.
• Temporarily closed: use it only if you'll be shut for more than seven days, such as a long renovation, and reopen the profile on the day you reopen. For shorter closures, use special hours.

Photos and videos

Patients use photos to judge whether your clinic is clean, modern and easy to find. Google accepts JPG or PNG photos between 10 KB and 5 MB (720 by 720 pixels is recommended) and videos up to 30 seconds and 75 MB. Heavy filters and heavily edited images aren't allowed.

The photos we add first for every clinic:

• The front of the clinic from the road, in daylight and in the evening with the sign lit, so patients recognise it when they arrive.
• The entrance from the parking or the lift, if the clinic is on an upper floor.
• Reception and the waiting area, clean and tidy.
• Consultation and treatment rooms, and key equipment.
• The doctors, in the clinic, not on a plain studio background, and the team.

Leave out stock photos, anything showing a patient's face or records without written consent, and before-and-after images, which medical ethics rules discourage. Doctors are bound by their council's code on advertising (the 2002 code of ethics for modern medicine doctors, and separate codes for dentists, AYUSH practitioners and homoeopaths); our guide to advertising rules explains what they allow. You'll often hear that renaming photo files or adding location data to them helps rankings. We haven't seen evidence it does; the time is better spent taking good photos.

Posts

Posts are short updates that appear on your profile. Google offers updates, events and offers. Posts older than six months are archived unless they have a date range, and you can now schedule posts and set them to repeat.

For clinics, posts that work are plain and useful: a health camp date, festival hours, a new doctor joining, a short explanation of a treatment, or an answer to a question patients ask every week. Once a week is enough. Avoid discount offers on treatments: Google restricts promotions for regulated medicines and medical devices, and doctors' codes of ethics bar soliciting patients. Our Google Business Profile management service includes weekly posts.

Reviews

Reviews drive prominence, and they're usually what tips a patient's decision. Google's review policy bans the following; the rules on staff targets and naming staff were added in April 2026. Businesses must not:

• Offer anything in return for a review.
• Tell patients what to write, or ask for reviews that mention a staff member by name.
• Give staff a target number of reviews to collect.
• Pressure patients to review while they're at the clinic.
• Post reviews from staff or family.

What's allowed: asking every patient the same simple way, with a short link or QR code, after their visit. When you reply, never confirm that the reviewer is your patient or mention anything about their health, even in a positive reply. Patients can tell when replies are copied from an AI tool, so keep them short and specific. Our guide on getting more patient reviews without breaking the rules covers the full routine, and our reputation management page explains how we handle them for clinics.

Questions, AI and Ask Maps

Until late 2025, profiles had a public Questions and Answers section. Google has been replacing it with an AI “Ask” feature that answers patients' questions using your profile details, your own answers and reviews. You can still answer common patient questions from your profile dashboard, so it's worth doing. Separately, Ask Maps, a Gemini-powered chat in Google Maps, began rolling out on Android and iPhone in India and the US in March 2026.

The practical effect for clinics: when a patient asks “does this clinic have parking?” or “do they do root canal on Sundays?”, the answer comes from what's on your profile and what patients have written in reviews. Services, attributes such as wheelchair access, hours and your description all feed those answers. Gaps become “I couldn't find that information”, and the patient moves on to the next clinic.

What to measure

The Performance section shows how patients found you and what they did. Google removed chat and call history in July 2024, so it no longer shows who called or when.

Because calls on Google count taps, not patients, add two things of your own: a call log at reception, and the question “how did you hear about us?” for every new patient.

Suspensions and appeals

Edits to your profile are reviewed before they go live, which can take from ten minutes to 30 days. Big changes, like a new address, name or category, get the most scrutiny and sometimes trigger a suspension or new verification.

The causes we see most for clinic suspensions:

• Keywords or area names added to the profile name.
• An address without a permanent sign, or a virtual office.
• Several profiles for the same clinic, or a doctor's profiles split by specialisation.
• A doctor's profile at a clinic where they don't actually see patients during the hours shown.
• Several major edits at once, especially right after verification.

If it happens, don't create a new profile. Fix the cause, then use Google's appeals tool. You'll need documents whose name and address match the profile, such as your clinic registration certificate, GST or shop and establishment registration, or a utility bill. After you submit the appeal, you have 60 minutes to upload them, so keep them ready. Decisions usually take up to five business days. Filing several appeals for the same issue slows things down.

Monthly checklist

Twenty minutes a month keeps a clinic profile healthy:

• Search your clinic on Google Maps as a patient would. Check the name, pin, phone number and hours.
• Review any edits Google or the public has suggested, and reject wrong ones.
• Reply to every new review.
• Add at least four new, real photos.
• Schedule the next month's weekly posts.
• Set special hours for any holidays coming up.
• Read the search terms in Performance, and add services for treatments patients search for.
• Compare calls on Google with calls in your own log.
• Check who has access to the profile, and remove anyone who has left.

If you'd rather not do this yourself, that's exactly what our Google Business Profile management covers, from ₹6,999 a month. You can also start with a free audit of your current profile.