David Nelkin shares nine steps to optimising your Google Business Profile to become the leading practice in your area.
Local search for dental practices is changing faster than most practices realise, but one thing has become clear: your Google Business Profile (GBP) now plays a central role in whether your practice is seen, trusted and ultimately chosen.
Many of the decisions practices still make about GBP are based on outdated assumptions about how Google, Maps and AI driven search actually work today. This article focuses on what genuinely matters in 2026, without unnecessary theory, and gives you a practical framework you can actually use.
1. Why Google Business Profile underpins local and AI visibility
There’s a growing assumption that AI somehow makes Google Business Profile less important, whereas in reality, the opposite is true.
As search continues to evolve, with AI overviews, conversational results and fewer clicks through to websites, Google Business Profile has quietly become one of the most influential sources of local business data on the internet. Map pack results, local listings and AI generated summaries are still built from the same underlying dataset, and in almost every case, that dataset is your GBP.
Google’s real advantage here isn’t language models. It’s data. When it comes to local businesses, Google Business Profile remains the richest, cleanest and most trusted source they have.
Your website explains your practice, whilst your Google Business Profile decides whether you’re seen.
2. What a Google Business Profile actually is
For many practice owners, Google Business Profile still feels like that box on the right hand side of Google. In reality, it’s Google’s verified record of truth about your practice.
Your GBP tells Google who you are, where you are, what you offer and whether people trust and engage with you. Because this data is structured and verified, Google places more confidence in it than almost any other source.
This is no longer a set and forget listing, but rather a live performance asset, and the practices that treat it that way, reviewing and refining it regularly, are the ones winning local visibility.
3. How GBP feeds map results and AI driven search
Local AI results don’t appear out of thin air. They’re built using a combination of Google Business Profile data, review content, categories, services and engagement signals.
Even when results are presented as AI summaries rather than a traditional map pack, Google is still pulling from the same local business dataset. Increasingly, other AI platforms are resolving local intent queries using GBP entities rather than crawling websites first.
If your GBP data is incomplete, inconsistent or generic, you are invisible at the exact moment of intent.
4. What actually impacts GBP rankings in 2026
GBP rankings are driven by relevance, activity, engagement and trust working together. At a practical level, this includes your business name, categories, reviews, services, attributes, opening hours, visual content, links, messaging and how people interact with your profile.
These elements don’t work in isolation, but Google looks at how consistently and credibly they reinforce each other.
5. Engagement is the most underestimated factor
Google pays close attention to how people interact with your business profile, often more closely than practices realise. Profiles that feel active and well maintained consistently outperform technically correct but inactive ones. Engagement signals such as calls, clicks, photo views and time spent on the profile feed directly into prominence.
6. Reviews still matter, but they’ve evolved
Google reviews still matter for local rankings and map pack visibility, but they no longer work effectively in isolation. Increased moderation, delayed publishing, removals and anonymous reviewers mean practices need to focus less on raw numbers and more on recency, sentiment and credibility.
A steady flow of recent reviews consistently outperforms large historic totals, because it signals that patients are choosing you now.
It’s also now crucial to have a cross-platform review strategy which includes other platforms such as Yell, Facebook, Trustpilot and Whatclinic. Google itself monitors and sometimes displays your activity on these, whilst other AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity rely on review on these to inform them about your practice.
7. Why this all leads to one conclusion
Optimising your Google Business Profile is no longer about ticking boxes once a year. It’s about building a credible, active profile that reflects how patients actually experience your practice. Which brings us to the most important section…
8. Step-by-step: optimising your Google Business Profile properly
Here is your takeaway checklist for your dental practice of what a fully optimised, future-proof GBP actually looks like.
Business name
- If your real world trading name legitimately includes the thing you want to be found for, it can move rankings noticeably
- Opening a new practice? This is the perfect time to do this – add a strap line with keywords in it and if you make sure this is in your logo and signage you can use it as your GBP name
- Don’t keyword-stuff or invent names which can come with a suspension risk.
Categories
- Choose the primary category that most closely matches the main keyword you want to rank for and add as many relevant additional categories as possible
- Consider practitioner listings and ensure each one has a different primary category – as a dental practice you are allowed multiple listings, but you’ll need to optimise each one in the same way to get the most out of it.
Reviews
- Ask every patient for a review (unless you know they’re unhappy), and never stop asking
- Follow up, keep the flow consistent, and prioritise recency and sentiment
- Reply to every review within 24 hours.
Services and products
- Add every service Google suggests (as long as you actually offer it)
- Add custom services too and write them in patient language rather than clinical language
- List every core treatment in both services and products
- Treat products like mini landing pages, not placeholders
- Think outside the box ie, free consultations and nervous patients
- Add new services regularly.
Attributes
- Add every attribute that applies to your practice, because attributes help you show for searches that include that intent (finance, accessibility, etc).
Website and booking links
- Make sure your website is linked to your profile
- Use the correct link types (website and booking) and track them, because it improves trust signals and helps you measure performance.
Opening hours
- Keep hours accurate and keep special hours up to date
- If you genuinely answer calls later than your competitors, you can benefit in that extra window, and your practice is more likely to appear over them
- Never set ‘open 24 hours’ unless you are truly open 24/7.
Visual content
- A minimum of 100 real images per practice location
- Quarterly clean-up of outdated or irrelevant images
- Regular uploads of authentic photos – every few weeks
- Never use stock images
- Short videos such as clinic tours, treatment explainers and patient testimonials.
Google posts
- Treat posts as free adverts, not social media updates – they are generally shown to a pre-qualified audience.
- Publish weekly
- Focus on offers, services, open days, testimonials, before-and-after results and awards
- Avoid filler content that doesn’t support engagement or conversion.
Supporting features and engagement
- Add social media links (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and any other active channels) so Google and users can corroborate your brand beyond GBP – and check they are correct (we’ve seen one practice’s GBP linking to another’s Instagram page!)
- Enable messaging – activate Whatsapp and SMS messaging so both existing and new patients can contact you in the way they increasingly expect to
- Test messaging regularly to ensure it’s actually working and being monitored by the team
- Select relevant attributes such as accessibility features, amenities and finance availability, as these act as fast trust and ranking signals in local and AI-driven interfaces.
Citations and consistency
- Ensure accurate listings across trusted directories
- Prioritise consistency and authority over volume
- Regularly audit for duplicates or outdated information.
Monitoring and optimisation
- Track search vs map views
- Monitor calls, clicks and booking activity
- Monitor appearances in AI overviews and conversions from these, not just rankings
- Review engagement with images, posts and services
- Make adjustments quarterly based on what is actually driving visibility and enquiries.
9. The future role of Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is no longer a basic listing but a visibility engine, a trust signal and a conversion driver. As Google moves towards calling businesses on a user’s behalf from search and maps, and monitors increasingly granular behaviour signals such as call handling and responsiveness, reliability and user experience will matter more than ever.
The practices performing best locally in 2026 won’t be chasing shortcuts, but treating GBP as a system supported by processes, data and ongoing optimisation rather than a background task.
How XD helps practices grow
At XD, this is exactly how we approach local growth, not as a one-off SEO exercise but as a living asset that underpins visibility, trust and conversion.
I’m David Nelkin, founder and CEO of Xcelerator Dental. For 14 years, I’ve worked exclusively with dental practices to help them grow in a way that’s sustainable, measurable, and aligned with how patients actually make decisions.
If you’d like to understand how this fits into your practice and how we can help you get more from your Google Business Profile, you can find out more via our website, or Whatsapp me on 07834 978074.
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