Fixing a Google Business listing for a dental clinic

What the listing actually is

When somebody types the name of your town and the word dentist, Google does not show her ten websites. It shows her a small map with three clinics on it, each with a name, a star rating, an address and an open or closed label. Almost everybody picks from those three.

That box is built out of your Google business listing. Not your website, not your Facebook page. If the listing is thin or wrong, you are not in the box, or you are in it looking closed.

Claim it, even if you never made it

Most clinics already have a listing that somebody else created, either Google itself from public information or a patient adding the place on the map. If you have never signed in to it, nobody at the clinic controls what it says.

Claiming it means proving to Google that the clinic is yours, usually with a postcard to the address, a phone call, or a short video walkthrough. It is tedious and it is the single most valuable hour of admin available to a small clinic.

An unclaimed listing is a page about your clinic that you cannot edit and anybody can add to.

The name, exactly as it is on the signage

Put the clinic name and nothing else. Not the name plus the town plus the words dental implants braces cleaning. Stuffing the name is against Google's rules, competitors can report it, and the listing can be suspended, which takes far longer to undo than it took to do.

If the sign outside says Santos Dental Clinic, the listing says Santos Dental Clinic.

The category

Set the main category to Dentist. Then add the extra ones that genuinely apply, such as an orthodontist or a cosmetic dentist, if that work is really done at the clinic by somebody qualified to do it.

The main category is doing heavy lifting in what searches you appear for. Getting it wrong, or leaving it as something vague like a medical clinic, quietly keeps you out of the box.

The pin on the map

Open your listing on a phone and tap directions, then follow them the way a first time patient would. In a lot of Philippine towns the pin lands on the road, on the wrong side of a block, or on the building next door, and the patient ends up circling with her data running out.

You can drag the pin to the actual door. Do it. Then write the landmark into the address line the way people here actually give directions, beside the church, above the pharmacy, second floor of the building with the blue sign.

Hours, and the holidays that catch you

Wrong hours cost you twice. Once when she does not come because the listing says closed, and once when she does come because it says open and finds the shutter down. The second one turns into a review.

Set the regular hours honestly, including lunch if you close for it. Then set the special hours ahead of time for the days everything shifts, Holy Week, the days around Christmas and New Year, Undas, and local fiesta days. Google lets you mark those in advance and almost nobody does.

Photos, and which ones matter

The listing photo people look at most is the outside of the building, because they are trying to work out whether they will recognise it. Add that one first, taken in daylight, from where somebody would arrive.

• The front of the clinic from the street.
• The reception area, tidy and lit.
• The chair and the room, so she knows what she is walking into.
• The dentist, a real photo, so a name has a face.

Update them once or twice a year. Photos taken before the last renovation quietly tell people the listing has not been touched in a long time.

The number and the booking link

Put a number somebody answers, not a landline that rings in an empty room at lunch. If you have a booking link, there is a field for it, and it puts a book button right on the listing where she is already looking.

That button is worth more than anything you can write on the listing, because it removes the step where she has to decide to call a stranger.

Services and the price question

Fill in the services list with the things you actually do most, in the words patients use. Cleaning, not oral prophylaxis, or both. It helps her recognise herself in the listing and it helps Google understand the clinic.

Whether to show prices is a separate argument and we made it in another piece. The short version is that a starting price for the routine work saves your receptionist the same conversation twice a day.

Posts, and whether they are worth it

Google lets you put short posts on the listing. They do not get much attention on their own and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. What they do is keep the listing looking maintained, and they occasionally show up beside the clinic when somebody searches your name directly.

It is a fifteen minute job once a month. Do it if the fifteen minutes exist, ignore it if they do not, and never let it become the reason the hours never got fixed.

The questions section nobody watches

Listings have a questions and answers section, and here is the part that surprises most owners. Anyone can answer. A stranger who once went to your clinic, or someone who has confused you with a different clinic, can post the answer that everybody else then reads.

Go and read yours. Answer anything sitting there. Then post the three questions you get asked every day yourself, with your own answers, so the section is full of things that are actually true.

Reviews sit on this listing too

Everything above decides whether she sees you. The star rating under your name decides whether she picks you, and that is a whole job of its own.

The short version is that the clinics with a lot of reviews are the clinics that ask every patient, every day, and reply to every review they get.

Where to start this week

Claim the listing if it is not claimed. Fix the hours and add the special hours for the next holiday. Drag the pin to the door. Add the photo of the front of the clinic. Read the questions section.

That is an afternoon, and it is an afternoon that changes what every stranger in your town sees. Keeping it right afterwards, month after month, is the part that quietly stops happening, and that is the part we take over.