Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing a new patient sees, before your website. For dental practices it decides local pack visibility, and it's also where many practices get in trouble: wrong listing structure, keyword-stuffed names, and review replies that disclose patient information. Here's how to set it up within Google's rules and HIPAA.

Practice listing vs dentist listings

Google's guidelines distinguish between a practice and the individual practitioners who work there:

  • The practice gets its own profile.
  • Individual dentists can have their own profile if they're public-facing and patients can contact them at the verified location during stated hours. That profile contains only their name, not the practice name.
  • A solo dentist at a branded practice uses a single profile named "[brand]: [dentist name]".

Setup checklist

  1. Name: your real practice name only. Adding keywords like "Best Implant Dentist" can get the profile suspended.
  2. Primary category: the one that best describes the practice; add secondary categories for real specialties.
  3. Services: list the treatments you actually offer.
  4. Hours: accurate, including holiday hours.
  5. Booking link and phone: the number that's actually answered.
  6. Photos: the office, team and equipment. Never patient-identifiable images without written authorization.
  7. Attributes: accessibility and other attributes that apply.

Getting reviews the right way

  • Ask every patient the same way, for example after the visit by text or email.
  • Never pay for reviews or offer incentives conditioned on positive sentiment. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews, effective 21 October 2024, prohibits it.
  • Don't filter who gets asked based on whether you expect a positive review.

Replying to reviews without breaking HIPAA

This is where dental practices get fined. HHS has settled with or penalized several of them for disclosing patient information in review responses:

PracticeOutcome
New Vision Dental (California)$23,000 settlement for disclosing patient information in Yelp review replies
Elite Dental Associates (Dallas)$10,000 settlement for social media review responses
U. Phillip Igbinadolor, DMD & Associates (North Carolina)$50,000 civil money penalty for a webpage response to a negative review

Safe reply rules:

  • Never confirm the reviewer is a patient.
  • Never mention treatment, appointments, insurance or anything from their record.
  • Use a general reply and invite them to contact the office directly.

Example: "Thank you for your feedback. We take every comment seriously. Please call our office manager at [number] so we can talk directly."

Track calls and bookings

Add UTM parameters to the website link on your profile so visits from the profile show up separately in analytics. Track calls and bookings in your practice management system, not just profile views.

Next step

A Google Business Profile is one part of dental marketing. Treatment pages, Google Ads for urgent demand, and follow-up decide how many new patients you actually book. See marketing for dentists or book a 30-minute discovery call.