Why claiming your Google Business profile matters

Help your patients — and attract new ones — with an accurate Google Business Profile

A woman searches for a new internist on her phone. The online listing she finds shows last year's hours, no photos, and a two-year-old review nobody answered. She calls the next practice down the list and never visits the internist's website at all.

This happens to small practices every day. And usually, nothing on the practice's end is broken. Google built a listing from public data, and nobody on the practice's staff has ever logged in to fix it. Claiming and completing that listing is a one-sitting task that can have a meaningful impact on the number of prospective patients who contact the practice.

The numbers say so plainly: 77% of patients¹ use search engines before booking an appointment and 46% specifically turn to Google² when finding a new practitioner.

A profile you didn't make is making decisions for your patients

Google explains in its own help documentation that Business Profile information can be compiled from publicly available web content, licensed third-party data, user contributions such as addresses, phone numbers, photos, and reviews, and owners who claim profiles.³ Some practices may already have a profile built from information Google has gathered from multiple sources, even if no one at the practice created it.

Hours might be right. They might be two years old. The phone number might ring the front desk; it might ring the answering service the practice used in 2019. Photos might exist; but they weren't anything the practice created, or approved.

Here's the part most articles on this topic miss. While much of the web is bracing for AI to summarize it out of relevance, Google's business profile listing has quietly become more important, not less.  

When someone runs a local search like "internist near me," Google shows results in two main ways:

1. An AI-generated summary — a paragraph Google's AI writes at the top of the page, pulled together from across the web.
2. The traditional set of local results: the small map with business listings pinned to it, and the profile box that appears when a specific practice is searched for by name.

In late 2023, 100% of "near me" provider searches triggered an AI summary at the top of the page. By late 2025, that figure was 0%.⁴ Google deliberately stopped generating AI summaries for these searches and now routes patients straight to the traditional local results instead — which means the Business Profile is what a prospective patient sees and judges. For the searches that bring new patients to a small practice, the profile is the page that answers their question. The more accurate it is, the better that answer.

What patients may see when a listing is incomplete

A few specific things can go missing when a listing isn't claimed or maintained:

• Wrong hours can send prospective patients to another practice.
• A missing or outdated phone number means a prospective patient's call may never connect.
• Stale or generic photos lower trust before a patient has dialed.
• No way to respond to reviews — including ones that misstate facts or violate Google's own policies.
• Lower visibility in local results. Google decides which listings to show first based on how relevant, close, and popular a profile is. A claimed, maintained profile gives Google more to work with; an unclaimed one may provide fewer of these details, and could show up lower as a result.

How to find out if you already have a profile

Here's how to understand your existing Business Profile: Open a "private" window in your web browser ("incognito" in Google Chrome) and search for your practice name and city. One of three things will show up:

1. A profile appears on the right side of the results with a small "Own this business?" link. The profile exists, and nobody has claimed it yet. This is the most common case.
2. A profile appears without that link, and the information looks roughly right. Someone may already have access — possibly the practice owner, possibly a former office manager, or possibly a marketing vendor the practice stopped working with years ago. The next step is to find out who, and request access.
3. No profile appears at all. Less common, but it happens with newer practices. The next step is to create one from scratch.

Look for a visual cue: A small verification check next to the practice name means someone has already claimed the profile — though the information in it may still be inaccurate. The absence of an "Own this business?" link, paired with no verification check, generally means no one has claimed the profile yet.

How to claim the profile

Start at business.google.com. Sign in with an account the practice owns — ideally one tied to a practice email address, not a former employee's personal Gmail.

Google offers a few methods to verify that you're authorized to create or edit a profile for a business. With the postcard method, Google mails a physical postcard with a verification code to the practice address, which takes 5 to 14 days to arrive. Other methods like phone, email, a recorded video, or a live video call confirm authorization faster. A video recording or call typically asks the person to show the practice location, signage, and proof they have access to the business, so Google can see the practice is real and that the person claiming it actually works there. Practices can sometimes choose the method; sometimes Google decides based on the category.

If the profile is already claimed by someone the practice can't reach, such as a former vendor, or a clinician who left, Google has a "Request access" option. The current owner gets a notification. If no one responds in three days, you may be able to transfer ownership. But verification timing varies by method, and mail verification can take longer than a week.

What "complete" actually means

Seven sections in the Business Profile do most of the heavy lifting:

1. Primary category: "Family medicine practice" brings up different search results than "doctor." Pick the most accurate match available.
2. Services: List them explicitly. These map directly to the "near me" queries that bring new patients.
3. Hours, including holiday and special hours: A practice that updated its profile for the day after Thanksgiving last year looks alive to Google. Additionally, a patient searching "[specialty] open now" only finds the practice if the hours are accurate.
4. Photos: Use real exterior and interior photos, but only when the space is empty and no patients, charts, appointment boards, computer screens, names, or faces are visible. Photos should be reviewed before posting to avoid exposing patient information. Three good photos beat 15 stock images.
5. Description: What the practice treats, who it serves, and how to becomes a new patient.
6. Attributes: Wheelchair accessibility, online appointments, languages spoken, telehealth availability. Each attribute is a filter that helps the practice appear for patients who need it.
7. Q&A: Anyone with a Google account can post and answer questions on a practice's profile, including people who have never been a patient. Practice staff should post and answer the most common questions themselves, rather than leaving it to strangers. Make sure you answer the top three most important questions: insurance your practice accepts, whether you're accepting new patients, and parking details. For insurance, avoid overpromising and direct patients to call the office or check with their plan to confirm coverage and any referral requirements.

A one-sitting checklist

Once the right person has account access, this checklist can usually be completed in one sitting:

1. Confirm that the practice name, address, and phone match the website exactly.
2. Set the primary category to the most specific match for your practice.
3. Add every service offered.
4. Upload three to five real photos.
5. Set regular hours and add the next two upcoming holidays.
6. Write a 250-word description of your practice in patient-facing language.
7. Add attributes for accessibility, telehealth, and languages.
8. Add three Q&A entries with the practice's own answers.

What comes next

Claiming and completing is the foundation. Additional work that is very important — and the one that does the most to attract prospective patients over time — is reviews: what patients say, how the practice responds, and how often new reviews come in. You can learn more about the importance of online reviews.

But beyond reviews, it's worth confirming the foundation is actually solid. Run through this quick audit to catch anything in your previously established Business Profile that's already drifted.