Local SEO for doctors is the work that puts your practice in the Google map pack when people search in your suburb. Google names three things that decide it: relevance, distance and prominence. Two of those three are completely safe for you to work on as a registered practitioner. The third, prominence, is built partly on reviews, and that is where Australian clinics hit a wall. AHPRA says you should take care when you engage with reviews on someone else's site, because it may count as using the review in your ads. You can still win the map pack. You just need to know which lever you are pulling.
What actually decides the map pack in your suburb?
Google tells you the three things that decide it.
The map pack is the block of three business listings, with a map, near the top of a local search. Getting into it matters more than a page-one blue link. It sits above most of those links, and it shows your phone number and a directions button.
Google explains how local ranking works in its own help pages. The factors are relevance, distance and prominence.
- Relevance is "how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for".
- Distance is "how far each business is from the customer who's searching".
- Prominence is "how well-known a business is". Google adds that this factor "is also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have".
Google is also blunt about the thing clinic owners ask first. "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."
Now sort those three by how much you can move them, and whether moving them puts you at risk with the ad rules. Most general local SEO advice skips this step.
Is your Google Business Profile advertising?
Yes, by AHPRA's own definition it is.
Most practice owners treat their Business Profile like a directory entry. It feels like a phone book listing, so it feels outside the ad rules. But the AHPRA "Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service" do not leave much room for that.
"In the context of advertising a regulated health service, advertising includes all forms of verbal, printed and electronic communication that promotes and seeks to attract a person to a regulated health service provider and/or to attract a person to use the regulated health service."
In plain words, anything that draws people to your health service is an ad. Your Business Profile is online, and it exists to bring patients to your practice. So it meets the test twice over.
AHPRA is clearly thinking about this too. The guidelines list where reviews turn up. The list includes business websites, a service directory or booking site, social media, discussion forums, "on a search engine", and review sites.
So your profile falls under the rules. That means section 133 of the National Law, the main ban on misleading health ads, covers it too. I have set out the whole rule in the AHPRA advertising guidelines explained.
What does Google tell every business to do?
Google tells every business to get more reviews and to reply to them.
Its advice on prominence is short and clear. On the same help page, it says:
"More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking."
And on replying:
"When you reply to customer reviews, it shows that you value their feedback. Positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out."
Every local SEO guide turns those two lines into a process. Ask every patient for a review. Reply to every review within 24 hours. Put the top ones on your homepage.
That process is fine for a plumber. But if you run it in a physio clinic, two of the three steps come with a regulator attached.
Why does that advice put a clinic at risk?
One sentence explains it. It is about who owns a review once you touch it.
Start with the good news, because it really is good. AHPRA sets out who is responsible:
"The advertiser, that is, whoever has control over the advertising, is responsible for compliance with the prohibition on the use of testimonials in advertising. Advertisers are not responsible for removing (or trying to have removed) testimonials published on platforms they do not control or on sites that are not advertising a regulated health service."
Read that twice if you have ever lost sleep over a review you cannot delete. Say a patient review sits on your Google listing, and you did not ask for it and cannot remove it. Then it is not your ad. You do not have to hunt it down.
Then comes the sentence that changes things:
"However, a regulated health service provider should take care if they choose to engage with reviews on a third-party site as this may be considered using the review in advertising."
The review on its own is someone else's words. Your reply might turn it into your ad. Replying is the step that can pull another person's words into your own promotion.
This is where the two rules collide. Google's advice for prominence is to reply to reviews. AHPRA says replying to a review may count as using it in your ads. So the most common bit of local SEO advice is also the riskiest thing an Australian clinic can do on its profile.
Read the wording carefully, because overstating it is wrong too. AHPRA says "should take care" and "may be considered". There is no published, clear-cut ban on replying. It is a warning that replying can move a review from someone else's page into your ads. So treat it as a risk to manage, and keep replying with care.
Which reviews are testimonials, and which are not?
Far fewer reviews are testimonials than most clinics assume. AHPRA draws the line at clinical content, and it defines that line precisely.
Section 133(1)(c) of the National Law bans advertising a health service in a way that "uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business". AHPRA then narrows what that means:
"In the context of the National Law, testimonials are recommendations or positive statements about the clinical aspects of a regulated health service used in advertising." "Not all reviews or positive comments made about a regulated health service are considered testimonials. For example, comments about customer service or communication style that do not include a reference to clinical aspects are not considered testimonials for the purposes of the National Law."
In plain words, praise about care is a testimonial, and praise about service is not. AHPRA also gives you a test. A review touches clinical care if it mentions one of three things.
| Trigger | AHPRA's wording |
|---|---|
| Symptom | The specific symptom or the reason for seeking treatment |
| Diagnosis or treatment | The specific diagnosis or treatment provided by the practitioner |
| Outcome | The specific outcome or the skills or experience of the practitioner, either directly or via comparison |
Clinics often miss that last trigger. Praise for the practitioner's skill counts as clinical, even when no condition is named. "Best physio in Melbourne" compares skill, so it is caught. "Reception rang me back within the hour" is not.
Here is the same test run over the kinds of review you actually get. I wrote the reviews below for this post. None are taken from a real listing.
| What the review says | Clinical aspect? | Safe to reply? |
|---|---|---|
| Easy to park and the clinic ran on time. | No. It is about service, and says nothing about care. | Yes. |
| Reception explained the fees before I booked. | No. It is about communication and cost. | Yes. |
| Fixed my sciatica in three sessions. | Yes. It names a symptom and a result. | Reply only about the service, and never repeat the claim. |
| Best chiropractor in the area, by a mile. | Yes. It praises skill by comparing. | Treat it as clinical. The comparison is the trigger. |
| Got me walking again after two years. | Yes. It names a result. | Treat it as clinical. |
| Booking online was straightforward and the rooms were clean. | No. | Yes. |
Run this test over your own listing, and the result often surprises people. A large share of your reviews are likely about access, cost, waiting and manner. Those are the ones you can work with. The full definition, plus the review widget trap, is in what counts as a patient testimonial under AHPRA.
Can you reply to a review at all?
Yes, you can, if you follow a few habits. You can also keep collecting reviews, which most clinics get backwards.
On collecting, AHPRA is clear that the ban does not reach the patient. The guidelines say the testimonial ban does not affect "patients sharing information, expressing their views online or posting reviews on review platforms". It also does not affect "how members of the public can interact with review sites or discussion forums".
So the patient writing a review never breaks the rule. The problem is when your practice uses it. That difference is worth reading twice. Plenty of Australian clinics have quietly stopped asking for reviews at all. They have given up the prominence signal because of a rule that does not say that.
On replying, three habits keep you safe.
- Sort before you reply. Run the clinical test on the review first. Check for a symptom, a diagnosis or treatment, or a result or skill. If none of those appear, reply as normal.
- Never repeat the clinical content. If the review names a condition or a result, do not thank the person for it, quote it back, or confirm it. Repeating a claim is how you make it yours.
- Keep your reply about the practice, and leave the care out. Thank them for the feedback, say how to contact the practice, and stop there. Say nothing about results.
The same habits decide what goes on your own site. Anything you pull onto a page you control is clearly your ad. The automatic review widget is the classic mistake. It publishes whatever it collects, including every clinical review, and you switched on the feed.
How does a clinic win the map pack safely?
Put your effort into relevance, which carries none of this risk. Then treat prominence as the careful lane.
Google says it plainly: "Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results." Relevance is about matching. You win it by describing what you actually do, in the words patients actually use, in every field Google gives you.
- Fill every field on your profile. Add your main category, extra categories, every service, hours, public holiday hours, access details, booking link and languages spoken. Empty fields cannot match a search.
- Pick your main category with care. It carries more weight than the others. If you list yourself as a general medical centre, you will not match a search for the thing you are known for.
- Make your name and address match your website exactly. Check the suite number, street short forms and spacing. If they differ across directories, the signal gets weaker.
- Add real photos of your premises. Show the outside, entrance, waiting area and parking. Leave out patients, treatment shots and before and after images. Those come with their own rules, which I have written up in the before and after photo rules.
- Build a page for each location. Make one real page for each site, with the suburb, the services, the practitioners and the same address as the profile. This is also where you answer the questions patients search before they book, which I covered in what patients Google before booking.
- Use the questions and answers section. You can post and answer your own questions. Answer the ones about parking, referrals, fees and wait times, in your own accurate words, with no promised results.
Every item on that list builds relevance, and none of them touch section 133. The bigger work of ranking a healthcare site sits in SEO for healthcare. The AI search side is in how Google AI answers patient questions.
What should you fix on your profile this week?
There are six things to fix, and five of them take an afternoon.
- Read your own reviews with the test in hand. Sort them into clinical and not clinical. Now you know which ones you can engage with.
- Read your existing replies. People skip this one. Old replies that repeat a result are sitting there in public, with your name on them.
- Check any review widget on your site. Look at what it shows right now, instead of what you assume it shows. If it pulls everything, it is pulling the clinical ones too.
- Fill every empty field on your profile. It builds relevance for free, with zero risk.
- Check your name and address against your website. Match them letter for letter.
- Change how you ask. Asking for reviews is allowed. But prompting someone to describe their condition or their result is a bad idea. Ask them about their experience of the practice.
The clinics that do well here rarely have the most reviews. They have a profile that matches what people search, and they never had to take anything down.
If you would rather have someone check the whole thing against the rules, that is the work I do. Healthcare practices are covered on the healthcare SEO services page. Every flag comes with the rule it breaks and the wording to publish instead.
