A correctly built Google Business Profile helps prospective patients and referring practitioners find the right consulting location, confirm subspecialty services, and see genuine reviews without the practice stepping outside AHPRA advertising rules. This checklist covers categories, multi-location structure, subspecialty listing, referral wording and review handling specifically for orthopaedic surgeons.
Start with the business category
Google's primary category for most orthopaedic surgeons is "Orthopedic surgeon" (Google uses the American spelling internally even though your visible business name and description should use Australian English). Add secondary categories only where genuinely accurate — "Sports medicine physician" or "Surgeon" may apply depending on your scope of practice. Avoid stacking categories that do not reflect what you actually do; an inaccurate category is a false representation issue as much as it is an SEO one.
If you operate across joint replacement, sports medicine and general orthopaedic trauma, list the primary category as your main scope and use the business description and services section to detail the rest, rather than trying to capture everything in categories alone.
Structuring profiles across multiple consulting locations
Most orthopaedic surgeons consult across more than one hospital, private rooms address or satellite clinic. Each physical consulting location that patients can visit needs its own profile, correctly linked to a specific address and phone number. Do not create a single profile and list multiple addresses in the description — Google does not support this and patients will be directed to the wrong entrance or floor.
- Verify each location separately, even where the surgeon is the same person across all of them.
- Keep the practice name consistent across locations (avoid switching between "Dr Jane Smith" and "Smith Orthopaedics" from one profile to the next).
- Set correct opening hours for each location individually — a shared consulting suite may only have your rooms open on specific days.
- Use the "service area" setting only if you genuinely travel to patients; for consulting rooms, a fixed address listing performs better and avoids confusion.
Multi-location structure is one of the more technical parts of managing profiles for surgeons, and it is worth reading a broader overview of medical SEO if you are managing this alongside several other digital assets.
Listing subspecialty services accurately
The services section is where subspecialty positioning matters most. List procedures and areas of focus factually — for example, total knee replacement, hip revision surgery, ACL reconstruction, or spinal decompression — without adding comparative claims such as "the best" or unverifiable outcome statistics. Google's services section is not the place for marketing language; it is a factual index that both patients and Google's algorithm read literally.
If you are not currently performing a listed procedure, remove it. An out-of-date services list is a common source of misdirected enquiries and, for regulated health services, an inaccurate representation of what you offer.
Wording that respects the referral relationship
Orthopaedic surgeons occupy a specific position between self-referring patients and GP or physiotherapist referrals. Your profile description should not discourage the referral pathway or imply that patients should bypass their GP — doing so risks both a poor relationship with referrers and advertising that could be read as encouraging indiscriminate use of a service. Neutral, accurate wording works best: describe your subspecialty focus, your consulting locations, and how to arrange an appointment (including that a referral may be required for a Medicare rebate), without positioning direct booking as superior to the referral route.
This is also the point at which many practices benefit from formal guidance — see our overview of AHPRA-compliant marketing for the underlying principles that apply to every public-facing profile, not just paid advertising.
Reviews: what is permitted and what is not
Reviews on a Google Business Profile are a well-established part of how patients evaluate a surgeon, but s.133 of the National Law prohibits testimonials in advertising about regulated health services, including testimonials about clinical outcomes. In practice this means:
- Do not solicit reviews that specifically praise clinical outcomes ("my new hip feels amazing"), and do not share, repost or feature such reviews elsewhere in your marketing.
- You cannot control what a patient chooses to write, but you can control what you invite. A neutral request — asking about their experience with the practice, communication and administration — is lower risk than asking for feedback on "results."
- Respond to reviews professionally and without confirming or discussing any patient's clinical details, which would also raise privacy concerns.
- Do not offer any inducement for leaving a review; the National Law restricts inducements offered without clear terms.
Run any review-request templates or profile description drafts through our free AHPRA advertising compliance checker before publishing them, since profile text is public advertising in the same way a website page is.
These details matter more for orthopaedic surgeons than for many other specialties, because consulting arrangements often sit inside larger hospital campuses or shared specialist suites, and a patient or referring GP who cannot locate the correct entrance loses confidence before the appointment has even started.
Photos, posts and the practical details patients need
Upload photos of the consulting rooms, waiting area and building entrance so patients (and referring GPs sending patients along) can find the location easily — this matters more for surgeons than for many other specialties because hospital campuses and medical precincts can be confusing to navigate. Keep parking and access information current. Use the "Updates" or posting feature sparingly and factually — a note about a new consulting day or a subspecialty clinic starting is appropriate; promotional language about outcomes is not.
Handling the "Questions & Answers" and messaging features
Google's Q&A feature allows anyone to post a public question and answer on a profile, and orthopaedic practices are sometimes caught out by unmonitored questions sitting unanswered for months, or answered inaccurately by someone unaffiliated with the practice. Check this section regularly and answer factually — confirming referral requirements, consulting days or parking, for example — without discussing any specific patient's situation. If messaging is enabled on the profile, make sure someone actually monitors it during business hours; an enabled but unanswered message channel looks worse to a prospective patient than no messaging option at all.
Ongoing maintenance
A profile that was set up correctly once and never revisited drifts out of date as consulting days change, hospital affiliations shift, or a subspecialty focus narrows. Build a quarterly check into practice administration: confirm categories, services, hours and photos are current across every location, and audit new reviews for anything that needs a compliant response.
For the parent strategy this profile work sits inside, see our orthopaedic surgeon marketing overview. For the paid search structure that complements a well-built profile, read our guide to Google Ads for orthopaedic surgeons, and for the referral relationships a profile needs to support rather than undermine, see building GP and physiotherapist referral pathways.
