Google Business Profile for clinics

Google explains how it ranks clinics on Maps: relevance, distance and prominence. This post goes through what that means for categories, services, the booking link, reviews and Q&A, and where the usual checklists get it wrong.

Google publishes how it ranks local businesses, and it comes down to three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Google's help page on local ranking also says "there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking." So any Google Business Profile checklist for clinics is really a guess about those three things. I compared the popular ones with Google's own rules, and several of them guess wrong.

Distance

Distance is how far your clinic is from the person searching. Nothing in your profile changes it. If a clinic across town beats you, it may just be closer to the person searching. Spend your time on the other two.

Relevance: categories, services, the booking link

Google's Business Profile guidelines say to "use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business." Choose the primary category that matches what most patients book. Add a second one only if it is a real, separate part of what you do, not a keyword you hope to rank for.

Your name has to be your real name. The same guidelines rule out service and location wording, so "Bright Clinic Weight Loss and IV Downtown" breaks them. That kind of name can get the profile suspended.

Services are where you show relevance. Google lets you pick suggested services or add custom ones with a description, but custom service names can't include prices. Name each service the way patients say it, and put price details in the description or on your website.

The booking link matters as much as the ranking. In the Bookings section you can add up to 10 links per category and mark one "Business preferred." Link it to the page where someone can actually book, not your homepage.

Prominence: reviews, and the website behind the profile

Google says prominence is "based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have," and that "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking."

You can ask every patient for a review. Google's fake engagement policy rules out two things clinics often do: offering a discount in return, and asking only the patients you expect to be happy. A "rate us first, and only 5 stars go to Google" survey is that second thing. I go through the request itself in the Google reviews playbook.

The website is the part most checklists leave out. A private medical centre I built for in the Caribbean launched on a brand new web address in July 2026. In 12 weeks it reached page one of Google for more than 80 searches that don't include its name. The pages that did it were its published price list of over 400 services, filtered by category, ranking in the top 5 for searches like "how much for a ct scan in [country]". What did not work: its 40-plus plain-language articles brought a handful of visits between them. I wrote up which clinic pages actually ranked separately.

Taps to call doubled from August to September, and WhatsApp taps rose about two and a half times. Google Ads started on 18 August, so those numbers include ads. The full story is in the case study.

Q&A and photos

Most checklists still tell you to post and answer your own Q&A questions. Google discontinued its Q&A API on 3 November 2025 "as we are in the process of updating the Q&A functionality." I would not build anything on a feature Google is rebuilding. Put the answers patients ask for (price, parking, walk-ins, hours) in your description, your services and your website, where you control them.

Google describes photos as a way to "show customers what you offer." It doesn't say they move your ranking. Add the entrance, the street outside and the waiting room so a first-time patient can find the door. Leave out patients' faces.

1. Fix the nameYour real name only, no services or places.
2. Cut categoriesOne primary that matches what most patients book.
3. Add servicesPatients' words, prices kept out of the names.
4. Set the booking linkThe page where booking happens, marked Business preferred.
5. Ask every patientNo discounts, no filtering out unhappy patients.

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