What each field says
| Field | What a dental office puts there |
|---|---|
| Business name | The name on the sign and the website, and nothing else. A town, a treatment or “best” added to the name can get the profile suspended. |
| Primary category | Dentist for a general practice, or the specialty for a specialist practice, such as Orthodontist, Pediatric dentist or Oral surgeon. The category says what the office is, and its treatments go in services. |
| Other categories | Only what the office also is, such as Orthodontist where an orthodontist sees patients there, or Emergency dental service where it takes emergency patients. |
| Services | Every treatment the office offers, in the words patients search: implants, Invisalign, crowns, root canals, whitening. A treatment missing here cannot be highlighted for the patient who searched for it. |
| Website | That office’s page, or the homepage for a practice with one office, with a tag on the link so visits from the profile show up on their own in your analytics. |
| Booking link | Your own booking page for that office, set as the preferred link. Links from booking sites Google works with can appear there on their own, and the preferred link puts yours first. |
| Phone | A local number that rings at that office, rather than a group call center. |
| Hours | The hours the office is open to patients, with holiday hours set before each holiday. |
| Description | What the office treats and for whom, in plain words. Google does not allow links there, or a description about offers and prices. |
| Photos | The sign, the entrance, the reception and a treatment room, so a patient recognizes the office when they arrive. |
One profile per office, and one per dentist where several work
Google’s guidelines name dentists as individual practitioners. At an office with several dentists, the office has its own profile and each dentist is eligible for one under their name alone, linked to their page on your site. A dentist who is the only dentist at a branded office shares the office’s profile, named “[practice name]: [dentist’s name]”.
Assistants and the front desk do not get profiles, and no dentist gets a second profile for a second specialty. A town where you have no office gets no profile either: an address where nobody sees patients is not eligible.
The practice owns every profile
Google builds profiles from websites, data it licenses and what its users add, whether or not anyone at the practice made one. Search Google Maps for the practice’s name, each office’s address and each dentist’s name, and claim every profile that is yours. Two profiles for one office make a duplicate, and Google hides duplicates; ask for the two to be merged with a suggested edit on Maps, and the reviews come together.
The practice’s own Google account is the primary owner of every profile. The office manager and any agency get manager access through their own accounts, which lets them edit the profile but not decide who has access, so the practice removes them the day they leave. A dentist SEO company worth hiring does all its work on your profiles with manager access.
When a former manager or marketing company holds a profile, such as an old Google My Business listing set up years ago, request ownership from the practice’s account. The current owner has three days to answer, and if they do not, the practice claims the profile by verifying the office.
Verification
Google chooses how each office verifies, and when it offers a video recording, that is the method it recommends. Record it on a phone from inside the profile, in one take of at least 30 seconds: the street and the building number, the practice’s name on its sign exactly as it reads on the profile, then something only staff can open, such as the staff door with your key. Keep patients and their faces out of the frame.
Google takes up to five business days to review the video, and a “Review issues” notice lists what the next one has to show. A postcard code stops working if the name, address or category changes while it is in the mail, and changing a category later can send the profile back through verification, so the categories are settled before the office verifies.
Reviews
Every patient gets the same request after the visit, with the review link or QR code the office’s profile gives you, so the review lands on the office they visited. Dental reputation management sets up the requests and the replies, and what to do with a review that breaks Google’s rules.
What the profile’s own report shows
The Performance report in each profile lists the searches that found the office, and counts the calls, direction requests and website clicks it brought. If the office places implants and “dental implants” is not among those searches, the first place to look is whether the profile’s services and the office’s page say it.
The profile works with two other things: the reviews on it and the office page it links to. Local SEO for dentists covers all three for each office.