What we looked at
Between June and August we pulled the public Google Business Profiles of 86 clinics: 41 in Dubai, 25 in London and 20 in Sydney. Dental, physio, dermatology and a few GP practices. For each one we noted which fields were filled in, and where the clinic showed up in the map pack for its main treatment and area.
Almost everyone had the basics: name, address, phone, opening hours and a few photos. The gaps were further down.
Services
Only 31 of the 86 clinics had listed their services. The rest relied on the primary category, so a dental clinic offering Invisalign, implants and emergency care looked identical to one that only does check-ups. Google uses the services list to match a listing with specific searches, and so do the AI assistants that read Google's data.
Add every treatment you offer, using the words patients use, and write a one-line description for each. "Same-day emergency appointments, including Fridays" tells Google and patients far more than "Emergency dentistry".
Attributes
Attributes are the small tick boxes: wheelchair accessible, women-led, languages spoken, online appointments. In Dubai, languages matter a lot. Patients search for an Arabic-speaking or Russian-speaking doctor, and a listing that says so has a real edge. Fewer than a quarter of the clinics we checked had set any attribute beyond accessibility.
Questions and answers
The Q&A section was empty on 58 profiles. On another 11, the only questions came from strangers, and a few had wrong answers from other users that the clinic had never corrected. You can post your own questions and answer them. Start with the five things the front desk hears most: parking, insurance, prices for common treatments, weekend hours, and whether children are seen.
Did it make a difference?
Clinics with services, attributes and Q&A filled in appeared in the top three map results for their main treatment about twice as often as those without. That isn't proof on its own, since better-run clinics also tend to have more reviews. But when we filled in these fields for three client clinics in Dubai, all three moved into the map pack for at least two new treatments within six weeks.
It takes about an hour per location. Put it in someone's calendar, and check it again every quarter.
- Local SEO
- Google Business Profile
- Healthcare
Mohammed Khan
Mohammed runs local SEO at AdAscend, which mostly means Google Business Profiles, reviews and map rankings for clinics, restaurants and retailers with more than one branch.
