Google Business Profile Practitioner Listings for Law and Dental

Those two conditions do most of the sorting. A partner who meets clients at the office qualifies. A paralegal, office manager or treatment coordinator does not, however client-facing the job feels. Google's guidelines for representing your business also say a practitioner shouldn't have multiple profiles to cover different specializations.

Practitioner profiles may include a title or degree. Google's examples include Dr., MD, JD and Esq.

Everything below applies to both law firms and dental practices unless noted. Where ethics or privacy rules differ between the two, we call it out. None of it is legal advice.

Google's own example of the shared format is 'Allstate: Joe Miller' for an agent who is the only public-facing practitioner at an Allstate-branded location. The law and dental names in the table are fictional.

Google's guidelines say who may have a profile, not who should. That second question is a business decision, and firms and practices tend to miss in one of two directions: no profiles for the attorneys clients actually ask for by name, or a profile for every associate whether anyone searches for them or not.

Profiles earn their place for lead attorneys with their own referral base, for specialists inside a general practice, such as an orthodontist in a family dental office, and for practitioners who already collect reviews under their own name.

They are more likely to compete when a junior practitioner has no reviews, uses the same category as the practice and shares its main phone number. Then two profiles at one address chase the same searches, and neither is clearly the better answer. Before creating one, answer these:

Google says a name should reflect the real-world name used consistently, and that including unnecessary information in a business name isn't permitted and could result in suspension. Its examples of what not to add include marketing taglines, phone numbers, URLs and business hours.

For categories, Google asks for as few as possible, as specific as possible, and ones that complete the sentence 'This business IS a,' not 'HAS a.' It also says not to use categories solely as keywords. Its rule that a department must use a different category from the main business applies to departments; the guidelines state no equivalent rule for practitioners. We still usually give the practice its broad category and each practitioner the most specific category that honestly describes their work.

A Business Profile can have multiple owners but only one primary owner. Owners can add and remove users and even delete the profile; managers can do almost everything else, including replying to reviews. To transfer primary ownership, the profile must already have another owner or manager, and new owners and managers must wait 7 days before they can use some features. Google's owners and managers help page has the details.

When a practitioner leaves, Google's documented option is to mark the profile permanently closed. Google notes that a permanently closed profile may still appear on Search and Maps for people who search for it, clearly shown as closed. That beats a live profile sending calls to someone who no longer works there, but it isn't invisible.

Decide the rest in the employment or partnership agreement: who owns the profile, whether it will be closed or handed over when the practitioner leaves, and who replies to reviews in the meantime. The worst case is a profile created under a departing associate's personal email, which the practice can't close without their cooperation.

ABA Formal Opinion 496, issued January 13, 2021, says Model Rule 1.6 bars disclosing information relating to a client's representation, and that a negative online review alone doesn't meet the rule's self-defense exception. As a best practice, it suggests lawyers consider not responding, because a reply can draw attention and invite more. Lawyers who do reply may invite the person to get in touch privately, or say that professional considerations preclude a response. They may also ask the site or search engine to remove the post.

Dental practices answer to HIPAA. HHS's Office for Civil Rights settled with New Vision Dental in California over the impermissible disclosure of patients' protected health information in responses to online reviews. The practice paid $23,000 and agreed to a corrective action plan.

Practitioner profiles raise the risk, because reviews land on an individual who may reply from a phone late at night. Route replies through the practice and give practitioners approved templates:

A bio page answers the question the searcher had: who is this person, what do they handle and how do I reach them. Put the practitioner's name, title, practice areas or services, office address, phone and photo on it, matching the profile exactly. A short introduction video helps too; our attorney video script templates include one.

For structured data, schema.org's LegalService type describes a business that provides legally oriented services, such as a law firm. Schema.org marks its older Attorney type as deprecated because LegalService is more inclusive and less ambiguous. Dental practices use the Dentist type. Mark the individual as a Person with a jobTitle, and connect them to the practice with worksFor.

Run this every quarter and whenever someone joins or leaves. If after-hours calls from practitioner profiles go unanswered, see our guide to AI receptionists for law firms. For the wider list of local search problems we run into, read the biggest SEO mistakes businesses make, or ask our SEO and search growth team to run the audit with you.