Google Business Profile for doctors: setup, categories, posts
A Google Business Profile for doctors should be claimed, verified and owned by the doctor or clinic, with the correct practitioner or clinic structure, specific categories, accurate OPD hours and a tagged booking link. Post practical updates monthly, reply to every review without disclosing anything about care, and stop investing in chat and Q&A, which Google has removed or reworked.
Most doctors I speak to have a Google listing they did not create. Someone at a clinic, an aggregator or a patient added it years ago, the timings are wrong, the phone number goes to a receptionist who left, and a handful of reviews sit unanswered. For a doctor in private practice, a well-run Google Business Profile for doctors is often the single most visible piece of their digital presence, more visible than any website.
This guide is for the individual doctor and the small clinic: which listing you should have, how to set it up, the categories, services, photos and posts that matter, and what to stop spending time on because Google has removed it. If you are a hospital group managing many units, the ownership questions are in Google Business Profile governance for multi-unit hospitals, and the bulk mechanics are in multi-location GBP across hospital units.
Practitioner or clinic: choosing the right Google Business Profile for doctors
Google treats doctors as individual practitioners, and its guidelines for representing your business set out who can have a profile. A practitioner is eligible if they work in a public-facing role and can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours. Support staff are not eligible, and a doctor cannot hold separate profiles for different specialisations.
In practice, most Indian doctors fall into one of four situations:
- Solo doctor, clinic in the doctor’s own name. One profile, named as the doctor is known, with the title if you use it, for example “Dr A. Sharma (example)”.
- Solo doctor, branded clinic. Where the doctor is the only public-facing practitioner at a branded location, Google asks for a single profile in the format brand, colon, practitioner name. For example, “Example Skin Clinic: Dr A. Sharma”.
- Group clinic with several doctors. The clinic keeps its own profile. Each doctor may have a practitioner profile, but it uses only the doctor’s name, without the clinic’s name added.
- Doctor who consults at several places. This is the common Indian pattern: a hospital in the morning, a clinic in the evening. Google’s guidelines do not give a neat answer here. My recommendation is one practitioner profile at the place where the doctor is reliably reachable during stated hours, usually their own clinic, and let the hospitals’ profiles and doctor pages carry the rest.
Before creating anything, search Google Maps for the doctor’s name and the clinic’s name. If a profile already exists, claim it rather than creating a duplicate. Duplicates split reviews and confuse patients.
Setting up and verifying the profile
Setup takes an hour if you have the facts ready. Verification can take longer, so start early.
- Collect the facts. Exact name as it appears on the signboard, full address with landmark, a phone number that rings at the clinic, OPD timings by day, website or booking page, and a short list of services.
- Create or claim the profile using a Google account the doctor or clinic owns, not a staff member’s personal account and not an agency’s account.
- Complete verification. Google decides which verification methods are available, and they include video recording, live video call, phone, text, email and postcard. For video, Google asks you to show outside signage or a street sign, equipment or materials that show you run the business, and access to staff-only areas. Google says reviews can take up to five business days.
- Add a second owner or manager you trust, so the profile is not lost if one account is locked.
- Fill every relevant field before promoting the profile, following the sections below.
A note on the name field. The guidelines forbid adding marketing taglines, service descriptions or location details to the business name. “Dr A. Sharma, Best Diabetes Specialist in Pune” is a keyword-stuffed name and a suspension risk. Qualifications such as “Dr.” or a degree are allowed for practitioners.
Choosing categories
Categories do more for relevance than anything else you control. Google’s guidance is to choose categories that complete the sentence “this business is a”, not “this business has a”, and to use the fewest, most specific categories that describe the core of what you do.
- Primary category: the most specific one that fits, such as a specialty category (for example Cardiologist, Dermatologist or Pediatrician) for a practitioner, or Medical clinic for a multi-specialty clinic. Google’s category names use US spellings.
- Additional categories: only where they describe what the practice is, not a single service it offers. A dermatologist who also does hair treatments does not need a hair clinic category unless that is a genuine, separate part of the practice.
- Check competitors’ categories for the same specialty in your city, but do not copy them blindly. The right category is the one that is true.
Changing the primary category can move your visibility significantly, in either direction. Change it once, deliberately, and watch the performance report for a few weeks before changing anything else.
Services, description, hours and the booking link
Services
Add the consultations and procedures you actually offer, in the words patients use. “Diabetes consultation” is better than “endocrine metabolic assessment”. Keep descriptions factual and avoid outcome claims. Only add prices if you will honour them.
Description
You have 750 characters. Use them to say who you are, what you treat, where you practise, languages spoken and how to book. No superlatives, no success rates, no comparisons with other doctors. What a doctor may say publicly about themselves is governed by the National Medical Commission’s professional conduct rules, listed on the NMC rules and regulations page; my reading for marketers is in NMC rules and doctor social media. This is not legal advice.
Hours
Enter OPD hours exactly, including split sessions, and use special hours for festivals and leave. Wrong hours generate angry reviews faster than anything else.
Booking link and contact options
Add your appointment link, pointing to your own booking page or your practice software, and tag it so your analytics can separate profile bookings from other traffic. Google removed Business Profile chat and call history on 31 July 2024, as its help centre confirms, so if you want patients to message you, add WhatsApp where the profile offers it and make sure someone answers.
Photos that help patients decide
Patients use photos to answer practical questions: what the building looks like, where the entrance is, whether the waiting area is clean, what the doctor looks like. Plan photos around those questions.
- Exterior with signage, taken from the street, so patients recognise it on arrival.
- Entrance, lift or ramp access, and parking if you have it.
- Reception and waiting area, tidy and well lit.
- Consultation room and equipment, without any patient in frame.
- A clear, recent photo of the doctor.
Never post photos of patients, reports or screens that could identify anyone, and no before-and-after images. Replace stock photos with real ones; patients notice.
Posts: what to publish and what to avoid
Google’s posts help page lists three post types: updates, offers and events. Posts can carry text, a photo or video and a button, and Google archives posts older than six months unless a date range is set. Google also warns that posts containing a phone number may be rejected if the number cannot be verified as the business’s.
For a doctor or small clinic, posts work best as a light, regular signal that the practice is active. Useful topics:
- Changes to OPD timings, leave and holiday schedules.
- New services or a new doctor joining the clinic.
- Events such as a screening camp or awareness talk, with dates.
- Short, clinically sound explainers that link to a fuller page on your website.
Avoid testimonials, outcome claims, discount-led offers on consultations and anything that reads like an advertisement for a drug or device. Google restricts content about health and medical devices and pharmaceutical products in posts. A post a month, done properly, beats a burst of daily posts that stops after three weeks.
Reviews, and what replaced Q&A
Reviews are the part of the profile patients read most. Two rules matter for doctors. First, Google’s fake engagement policy prohibits offering incentives for reviews and selectively asking only happy patients. Ask everyone, or ask no one. Second, when replying, never confirm that the reviewer is a patient or mention anything about their care. Thank them, acknowledge the concern and invite them to contact the clinic directly.
The operating model for requests, response times and templates is in patient reviews strategy. Keep the WhatsApp or SMS requests consent-based.
Do not invest time in the old public Q&A section. Google discontinued the Q&A API in November 2025 while reworking how questions are answered on profiles, and answers now increasingly draw on your profile, your website and your reviews. Put your frequently asked questions on your own website, where you control the answer.
Mistakes that get doctor profiles suspended or ignored
Most problems I see with a Google Business Profile for doctors are self-inflicted. These are the ones worth avoiding from day one.
- An address where the doctor does not see patients. Google’s guidelines say a virtual office is not eligible, and a shared space needs signage and staff during business hours. A residential address used only for mail does not qualify.
- Several profiles for one doctor. One for “diabetologist”, another for “thyroid specialist”, a third at an old clinic. Merge or remove them through Google’s processes; do not simply abandon them.
- Staff and family reviews. Google’s policy covers conflicts of interest, including current or former employment. Reviews from your own team are a risk to the whole profile.
- Frequent, unexplained edits. Changing the name, category and address repeatedly can trigger re-verification. Make changes deliberately and keep a note of what changed and why.
- Nobody owns it. A profile in a former receptionist’s Gmail account is a profile you will eventually lose.
A monthly maintenance routine
Profiles decay quietly. This is the checklist I give clinic managers, and it takes under an hour a month. The field-by-field version is in the Google Business Profile optimisation template for doctors.
- Search the doctor’s and clinic’s names on Google Maps and check for new duplicates or edits suggested by others.
- Confirm hours, phone and address; add special hours for the coming month.
- Reply to every new review.
- Publish one post and add at least one new real photo.
- Check the appointment link and website link still work.
- Review the performance report: calls, direction requests, website clicks and bookings, compared with last month.
- Check that the same name, address and phone appear on your website and the main directories. The method is in citations and NAP consistency for clinics.
If you also practise at a hospital
A doctor attached to a hospital lives in two systems: their own listing and the hospital’s. The hospital will have its own profile, often department profiles, and a doctor page on its website. Agree with the hospital who manages what. A practitioner profile the hospital created for you should be in an account you can access, and it should not disappear when your affiliation changes.
Your profile also needs a home to link to. Many doctors have no website, and the profile ends up doing a job it was never designed for. Google Business Profile vs website explains why the two work together, and doctor profile pages that rank covers the page you want Google to associate with your name. For the wider plan of which this profile is one part, start with the local SEO playbook for hospitals and clinics.
Questions people ask
It is the free listing that appears in Google Search and Maps for a doctor or clinic, showing address, hours, phone, reviews, photos and a booking link. Google allows individual practitioners to have one if they work in a public-facing role and can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours. Support staff are not eligible, and a doctor cannot hold separate profiles for each specialisation.
If you practise alone under your own name, one profile in your name is right. If you are the only public-facing doctor at a branded clinic, Google asks for a single profile named as the brand, a colon, then your name. If several doctors practise at the clinic, the clinic keeps its own profile and each doctor may have a separate practitioner profile using only their name.
Google’s guidelines do not spell out a clear answer for doctors who consult at several places. My recommendation is one practitioner profile at the location where you are reliably reachable during stated hours, usually your own clinic. Let the hospital’s own profile and its doctor page on the website represent your presence there, and keep your timings consistent across all of them.
Filling in the profile takes about an hour if you have your facts ready. Verification varies: Google chooses the method, which may be a video recording, live video call, phone, text, email or postcard. Google says video reviews can take up to five business days. Postcards take longer, so start well before you need the listing live.
The profile itself is free. The real costs are the time to keep it accurate, reply to reviews and post, and any tools you use for booking or review requests. Some doctors pay an agency to manage it. If you do, keep ownership in your own Google account and give the agency manager access only, so you never lose the listing.
Choose the most specific category that truthfully describes your practice, such as a specialty category for a practitioner, as the primary. Add additional categories only where they describe what the practice is, not a single service. Too many loosely related categories dilute relevance. Change the primary category rarely, and watch the performance report for a few weeks after any change.
No. Google’s guidelines forbid adding taglines, service descriptions or location details to the business name. A name like Dr A. Sharma, Best Diabetes Specialist in Pune is keyword stuffing and can lead to suspension. Use your real name as patients know it; qualifications and the title Dr are permitted for practitioners. Relevance comes from categories, services and your website instead.
Posts work best for practical updates: changes in OPD timings, leave schedules, a new doctor or service, screening camps and short explainers that link to your website. Avoid testimonials, outcome claims and content about drugs or devices, which Google restricts. Google archives posts after six months unless you set a date range, so a steady post each month is enough.
Reply calmly, briefly and without any clinical or personal detail. Never confirm the reviewer was your patient or discuss their treatment, even if they have. Acknowledge the concern, apologise for the experience where appropriate, and invite them to contact the clinic directly by phone or email. Then actually resolve it offline. Other patients read your reply more than the complaint.
Yes, provided the patient has agreed to receive messages from you and you ask every patient rather than only the satisfied ones. Google’s policy prohibits incentives for reviews and selectively soliciting positive ones. Send the request after the visit, keep it short, include the direct review link, and do not ask for specific wording or star ratings.
Google removed Business Profile chat and call history on 31 July 2024. It discontinued the Q&A API in November 2025 while reworking how questions are answered, with answers increasingly drawn from your profile, website and reviews. Put your common patient questions on your own website, and use WhatsApp or your phone line for direct conversations.
Use the performance report in the profile: calls, direction requests, website clicks and bookings, month on month. Tag your website and appointment links so your analytics shows profile-driven visits separately. Most usefully, ask new patients at the front desk how they found you and record it, because many calls from the profile never appear in any digital report.
It can, but agree the terms in writing. The profile should sit in an account you can access, and you should hold owner rights or at least know who does. Agree who replies to reviews and who updates timings. When an affiliation ends, a profile controlled solely by the hospital can leave you without your own reviews and listing history.
Yes, in most cases. The profile answers where, when and how to contact you, but it cannot hold detailed information about conditions you treat, your training or what to expect. Google increasingly draws answers from your website, and patients checking your credentials look for one. A simple, fast doctor page with clear booking beats an elaborate site that nobody updates.
Read my takes first in Google Search
