Google Business Profile for a clinic: the parts that matter
2026-10-09 · MedSlay
When a patient searches for your clinic by name, or for a specialist nearby, the first thing Google shows is usually not your website. It is a panel beside the results, or a pin on the map, with your hours, your phone number, directions and a row of stars. That panel is your Google Business Profile, and for many patients it is the whole of their research.
It is free, it takes an afternoon to get right, and most clinics set it up once, years ago, and have not looked at it since. Here are the parts that matter.
The four fields a patient actually acts on
A profile has dozens of fields. A patient deciding whether to come uses four.
- Hours. Wrong hours are the fastest way to lose a patient: they arrive at a closed shutter and do not come back. Set the OPD timings exactly, and set special hours for festivals and the days you are away.
- Phone number. It should ring somewhere that is answered during those hours. A personal mobile that goes unanswered through a busy OPD is worse than no number.
- The map pin. Check it on the map yourself. A pin on the wrong lane, or at the building's back gate, sends every new patient the wrong way.
- The booking link. If patients can book online, link straight to where they book, not to a home page they then have to search.
Get these four right before touching anything else.
Clinic, doctor or both
Google treats a practice and the individual doctors in it differently, and its guidelines change from time to time, so read the current version before you start. Broadly, a clinic with one public-facing doctor usually does best with a single listing that names both; a clinic with several doctors has a listing for the clinic, and doctors have their own only where they practise independently.
What matters more than the structure is one listing per real thing. Duplicates — an old listing at a previous address, one a patient created, one a former manager made — split your reviews and confuse the map. Claim them, then merge or remove them through Google's own process. Each location needs its own listing with its own hours; see running two clinic locations.
Categories and the description
The primary category decides which searches you appear in more than anything you write. Choose the most specific one that is true — the specialty, not just "clinic" or "doctor" — and add secondary categories only where they are genuinely true.
The description is for patients, not for search. Two or three sentences: who you see, what you treat, the languages spoken at the clinic, whether you take walk-ins. Leave out superlatives. They read as advertising, and medical council rules on how doctors may promote themselves apply here as much as anywhere.
Reviews: ask, never pay, always reply
Reviews are what most patients read after the hours.
- Ask at the right moment. The patient who leaves relieved is the one to ask. A small card at the desk with the review link does more than a poster.
- Never offer anything for a review, and never write them yourself or have staff write them. Google removes incentivised and fake reviews, and the loss of trust when it is noticed is worse than a low rating.
- Reply to every review, briefly and courteously. To a critical one, acknowledge it, apologise for the experience and invite them to call the clinic. Never confirm that the reviewer was your patient or mention anything about their care — a reply is public, and confidentiality does not end at the review box.
The most common complaint in clinic reviews is waiting, not treatment. If that is what yours say, the fix is in the queue — see reducing OPD waiting time.
Setting it up in an afternoon
- Search for your clinic and claim the listing. If one exists, request ownership; if not, create it. Google will verify that you run the clinic by one of the methods it offers.
- Fix the four fields. Hours including special hours, a phone that is answered, the pin, and the booking link.
- Choose the primary category — the most specific true one — and write a short description.
- Add real photos. The entrance from the street, the waiting area, the reception desk. Patients use them to find the door.
- Find and deal with duplicates. Search your clinic's name, old addresses and doctors' names; claim or report anything that is not current.
- Put a reminder in the diary. Check the profile every month, and before every festival.
Where the booking link should go
A profile that sends every patient to a phone number puts every booking through the busiest person in the clinic. A link to a page where patients pick a slot themselves takes that load off the desk.
MedSlay gives each doctor a public profile in the Doctor Directory, where patients pick a clinic, a date and a slot and receive a token number straight away. That page works as the profile's booking link: the patient goes from the search result to a confirmed token without a phone call, and walk-ins and phone bookings still join the same queue at the desk. For the rest of the clinic day, see clinic software.