Google Business Profile for hearing clinics: every field, set right.

Who may have a profile

Google's guidelines say a profile is for a business that makes "in-person contact with customers during its stated hours". A clinic with a front door qualifies. A rented address where the business does not operate "isn't eligible for a Business Profile", and "P.O. boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations aren't acceptable". A satellite office you staff two days a week can have its own profile if it is staffed during the hours it lists; a room you rent in a physician's building one morning a month cannot.

Two clinics under one roof (an ENT practice and an audiology practice that share a reception) can each have a profile if they are separately registered businesses with their own names and hours. One business with two names cannot.

Name

The name on the profile is the name on the door and the name on your state license, nothing else. Google's rule: "Including unnecessary information in your business name isn't permitted", and it lists taglines, store codes, phone numbers, URLs, hours and location details as examples. "Maple Street Hearing" is a name. "Maple Street Hearing | Hearing Aids Carverton | Audiologist" is a name Google will edit, and a competitor can report. Names that contain a manufacturer's brand belong to franchise locations.

Categories

Google's rule is to "Use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business", to choose "a specific category that represents your main business", and not to use categories "solely as keywords or to describe features of your business". The first category you choose is the primary, and it is the one that most decides which searches you match.

Google does not publish its category list, but third-party copies of it (one from May 2026 with 4,046 categories, another from June 2026) agree on four hearing categories: Audiologist, Hearing aid store, Hearing aid repair service and Hearing assistance earphone store. Type "hearing" into the category field of your own profile and you will see them.

• If an audiologist practices at the address, the primary is Audiologist. Add Hearing aid store if you dispense, and Hearing aid repair service if you repair.
• If the clinic is run by a licensed hearing instrument specialist with no audiologist on site, the primary is Hearing aid store, with Hearing aid repair service as a secondary. Do not use Audiologist as a category for a clinic without one; in Florida, using the title without a license is prohibited (468.1285), and the profile is advertising.
• Do not add Medical clinic, Doctor or Health consultant to catch searches. They dilute the primary.

Then check the primary every month, because Google sometimes changes categories itself. In December 2022 local search practitioners reported Google changing clinics' primary category from Audiologist to Medical clinic on its own, including for standalone clinics using Hearing aid store and Hearing aid repair as secondaries, with no action by the owner and no explanation. No cause was identified. The fix is a 30-second edit, but only if someone looks.

Services

Each category can carry a list of services, each with a name, an optional price and a description. A clinic may offer ten or more, and every one you list is a match for a search. Our working list for a full-service clinic:

1. Diagnostic hearing evaluation (name the tests: pure tone air and bone conduction, speech testing, tympanometry)
2. Hearing aid evaluation and fitting
3. Real-ear measurement
4. Hearing aid repair
5. Hearing aid cleaning and check
6. Earwax removal (if you do it)
7. Tinnitus evaluation (and management, if you offer it)
8. Custom hearing protection and swim plugs
9. Assistive listening devices
10. Help with over-the-counter hearing aids (if you offer it)
11. Medicare diagnostic visit without a referral (once per 12 months; see the Medicare guide for the exact wording)
12. Pediatric hearing testing (if you do it)

Write each description in a sentence or two of plain words. Prices are optional; if you put one in, it has to be the price a patient pays, and in Texas, Florida and California an advertised discount has to show the usual price as well. Leave prices out of the profile unless they are simple and stable, and put the full pricing policy on the website.

Hours

Google asks for "your regular customer-facing hours of operation" and adds that "Certain types of businesses shouldn't provide hours, including those with varied hours ... and those that operate only by appointment." That cuts two ways for a clinic. If you see patients by appointment only and nobody can walk in, list no hours; a profile that says "Open 9 to 5" when the door is locked earns bad reviews. If your front desk is staffed and people walk in for batteries, cleanings and repair drop-offs, list those desk hours, because they are customer-facing. "Open 24 hours" is wrong for every hearing clinic that is not an emergency department, and it is a common profile error.

Set special hours for holidays in advance. A satellite office lists only the hours it is staffed.

The audiologist's own listing

Google's guidelines name doctors and dentists among the individual practitioners who can have their own profile, and an audiologist fits the pattern: "a public-facing professional, typically with their own customer base". A practitioner may have a profile only if they "can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours". The rules that follow:

• With several practitioners at one address, the practice has its own profile for the location, and each practitioner's profile carries only the practitioner's name, not the organization's.
• A solo practitioner at a branded practice has one profile, named in the form "practice name: practitioner name", not two.
• Support staff do not get profiles. A hearing instrument specialist who sees patients under their own name can; the front desk cannot.
• "A practitioner shouldn't have multiple Business Profiles to cover all of their specializations."

Why bother: people search for the audiologist by name after a referral from a physician or a friend, and the practitioner profile is what the map shows them. The practitioner profile's category is Audiologist; its services can match the practice's.

Description

Up to 750 characters. Google's rules: "Do not include URLs or HTML code", and "Focus primarily on details about your business instead of details about promotions, prices, or sales." Write what the clinic does, who does it, for whom, and since when, in the order a patient would ask. A description that leads with "family owned since 1998" is true and tells a searcher nothing about whether you can look at the hearing aid that stopped working. One that says "Diagnostic hearing evaluations, hearing aid fitting with real-ear measurement, repairs and cleanings for any brand, and tinnitus evaluation, by Dr. Ana Alvarez, AuD, on the courthouse square since 1998" uses 180 of the 750 and answers the question.

Photos

Replace every stock photo. Google's performance counts show photo views, and a searcher comparing three map results looks at the pictures before the ratings. Take, with a phone, in daylight: the front door with the name visible, the parking, the waiting room, the sound booth with the door open, the fitting room with the real-ear equipment, the repair bench, the clean room where you make earmolds if you do, and each provider, named, with their consent. Add six at a time.

No patients. A full-face photograph is a HIPAA identifier under the Privacy Rule's de-identification standard, and using one in marketing needs the patient's written authorization. The clinic that posts a photo of "our happy patient with her new hearing aids" without the form on file has made a disclosure. The same applies to review-request graphics and social posts, which is one more reason we leave social media alone.

Appointment and website links

Google's "Manage your local business links" page lists "Book an appointment" among the actions a profile can carry, allows up to 10 links per category, and lets you mark one as "Business preferred". Point the appointment link at the page on your own site where a patient can request a time, not at a third-party scheduler that collects their details for its own purposes unless you have a business associate agreement with that vendor. The website link goes to the home page; the menu link, if Google offers it for your category, is not for clinics.

Attributes: set the ones that are true (wheelchair accessible entrance, parking, appointment required if it is) and leave the rest. Do not set "online appointments" unless the page actually books one.

Reviews, briefly

Google's review policy bars incentives of any kind and bars asking only satisfied patients. The FTC's rule at 16 CFR Part 465 bars fake reviews, bought reviews with a required sentiment, and the suppression of honest ones. Google says "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking", so the routine matters, and the routine is: everyone asked the same way, after the visit, by your own system, with no gift. Replies to reviews are public and must confirm nothing about anyone's care; HHS settled two cases over review replies that did. The reviews guide has the templates.

What the performance counts mean

The profile's performance page counts the searches that showed your profile, the people who viewed it, and the actions they took: website clicks, direction requests, and calls. "Calls" counts taps on the call button, not connected calls, so a report that says "we got you 40 calls" from that number is wrong by an unknown amount. We report taps, direction requests and clicks as Google counts them and say so. Watch the search terms list too: it tells you which services people searched before they found you, and which ones are missing from your list.

The monthly check

1. Primary category still Audiologist (or Hearing aid store)? Google edits categories without telling you.
2. Hours match the door, including the holiday you forgot to set.
3. Any "suggested edits" from the public pending? Accept or reject them; Google applies some automatically.
4. New reviews answered within a week, with nothing clinical in the reply.
5. Six new photos.
6. One post, if you have something to say: a new service, a new provider, a change in hours. Posts are not for coupons on a health profile.
7. Performance counts copied into the monthly report.

What to do in the next hour

1. Open the profile and read the primary category. Fix it if it is wrong.
2. Count the services listed. Add the ones you offer from the list above, one sentence each.
3. Read the hours as a patient would. Fix "Open 24 hours".
4. Read the description and rewrite it to say what the clinic does and who does it, under 750 characters, no URL.
5. Photograph the front door and the booth and upload both.