Your Google Business Profile is probably your most underrated marketing asset

When a patient in your suburb searches 'physio near me' on their phone, the first thing they see is a small map with three clinic pins, then three cards below the map. Those three cards are the local map pack. They include the clinic name, a star rating and review count, an address, whether the clinic is currently open, a click to call button, and a link to directions. For most patients, the decision is made here.

The clinic that appears in position one of the map pack gets the majority of the clicks. Position two gets meaningfully fewer. Position three gets noticeably fewer again. Below the three-pack is a 'More places' link. Most patients never click it. The stakes of where you rank in the map pack are real, and the mechanism for improving your position is free.

The Google Business Profile controls your presence in the map pack. It doesn't cost money to optimise. It costs time and attention. Most clinics put it in the setup-once-done pile. The clinics sitting in position one in your suburb probably didn't get there by accident.

Google's local ranking algorithm uses a combination of relevance, distance, and prominence. You can't do much about distance. But relevance and prominence are both movable. Here's where the leverage is.

The map pack displays your star rating and review count prominently. A clinic with 180 reviews at 4.9 stars looks significantly more credible than a clinic with 12 reviews at 4.8, even when the difference in the actual score is tiny. Getting reviews consistently matters.

The compliant way to ask is specific about what you're inviting them to review. At the end of a positive appointment: 'If you'd be happy to leave us a review about your experience at the clinic, we'd really appreciate it. You can find us by searching our name on Google.' That's the whole ask. The distinction matters under AHPRA: you're inviting feedback about the experience at the practice, not about clinical outcomes. 'I felt very welcome and the admin team were great' is experience. 'My back pain resolved after four sessions' is a clinical outcome, and directing patients toward that language creates a compliance risk even though the words are theirs, not yours.

AHPRA's position is that reviews on Google's platform are outside your control and you are not required to remove or moderate them. The line you cannot cross is republishing clinical outcome language from reviews in your own advertising. A 4.9-star rating in your ad is fine. A quoted line from a review describing what treatment achieved is a testimonial. Keep the ask about experience, keep the republishing to ratings only, and you're inside the lines.