How Google ranks the map
Google names three factors for local results in its Business Profile help:
- Relevance: how well the profile matches the search. Categories, services and the words on your website feed this.
- Distance: how far the clinic is from the searcher or the place named in the search. You cannot change this, which is why a clinic can rank first in one neighborhood and fifth in the next.
- Prominence: how well known the clinic is. Google lists review count and rating, links and articles about you, and your position in regular web results.
Google also says there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. Ads appear in their own labelled slots.
What to set on the profile
- Primary category: pick the most specific one that fits, such as Pediatrician or Urgent care center, rather than a broad Medical clinic. Add secondary categories only for care you really offer.
- Business name: use the name on your sign and letterhead. Google's guidelines do not allow extra keywords or city names in the name field, and listings that add them can be suspended.
- Hours, including holiday hours, and the appointment link if your category offers one.
- Phone: a local number that rings at the clinic. If you use a call-tracking number, keep the main number as an additional phone.
- Services and a plain description: the same services listed on your website.
Practices with several clinicians
Google allows individual practitioners, such as physicians and dentists, to have their own listing. Where a single practitioner is the public face of the practice, Google's guidelines allow one shared listing named in the form "Practice name: Practitioner name". Duplicate listings for the same location split reviews and confuse rankings, so merge or remove old ones.
Name, address and phone: say it the same way everywhere
Google compares the profile with your website and the rest of the web. Use exactly the same clinic name, street address and phone number in three places:
- The Google Business Profile.
- The website footer or contact page, as text, not inside an image.
- Your structured data, using a MedicalClinic or Physician type with
name,addressandtelephone. Google's local business structured data guide lists the fields it reads.
Suite numbers, "St" versus "Street" and old phone numbers are the usual mismatches. After a move, update the profile first, then the website, then directories such as insurer provider finders.
Reviews without a privacy problem
- Ask every patient, in the same way, for example in the visit follow-up message. Google does not allow offering anything in return for a review, and does not allow asking only happy patients.
- Reply to reviews, but never confirm that the reviewer is a patient or mention their care, even if they did. Under HIPAA, the fact that someone is your patient is protected health information.
- A short, general reply works: thank them, and invite them to call the practice manager.