The phone number on your Google Business Profile should reach someone who can help. If it leads to an old voicemail box nobody checks, families have little reason to know your team is waiting at a different number.
For an ABA therapy, occupational therapy or speech therapy practice, a Google Business Profile audit starts with everyday details: can a family find the right clinic, confirm the service is offered there and reach someone who can help?
This checklist focuses on Google Maps and local Search results. Local SEO can help families find accurate information about a practice, but map visibility is different from a website page’s organic ranking. Google says local results are based on relevance, distance and prominence. Accurate profile information can help Google match your business to searches, though no checklist can guarantee a position. Google explains its local ranking factors here.
For more on local SEO for ABA therapy practices, our ABA therapy marketing guide connects local visibility with the work of responding to inquiries.
1. Confirm eligibility, ownership and the clinic’s name
Check: Confirm that the practice qualifies for a profile, whether one already exists and who controls it. Google generally requires in-person contact with customers; an online-only business is ineligible. Only the owner or an authorized representative should manage the profile. See Google’s eligibility and ownership rules.
Why it matters: A profile nobody on your team can access is difficult to keep accurate. Creating a replacement can leave families choosing between conflicting listings.
Correct it: Claim the existing profile and complete the verification Google offers. If another account owns it, follow the ownership request process. Keep primary ownership with the practice and give staff or an agency appropriate access.
Compare the name with the clinic’s signage and established branding. Remove extra service phrases or town names added solely to attract searches. Google requires the name used in the real world. See its business representation guidelines.
2. Choose categories that describe the actual practice
Check: Open Edit profile → Business category and review the primary category and any additional selections. Use the options Google currently offers in that editor.
Why it matters: Categories help Google understand the business and affect local visibility. They should describe what the practice is, rather than act as a collection of keyword tags.
Correct it: Choose the most specific accurate primary option. Add only the few additional categories needed to describe the practice. A clinic offering ABA, OT and speech therapy should assess its actual mix of services instead of copying another clinic’s selections.
If an exact category is unavailable, choose an accurate broader option. Google does not let you invent a category, so a phrase used in your marketing may belong in your service descriptions instead. Category changes may also require verification again. Google’s category guidance explains the selection process.
3. Check where and when families can receive services
Check: Review the address, suite, map pin, service arrangement and hours against how the clinic actually operates.
Why it matters: An incorrect entrance or outdated schedule can create confusion before the first conversation. Listing another town can also suggest a location that does not exist.
Correct it: In the location settings, fix the real clinic address and map pin. Then distinguish between these arrangements:
Families visit the clinic: Show its eligible physical location. Families traveling from nearby towns do not, by themselves, make it a service-area business.
The practice visits families and receives nobody at its business address: Use the service-area arrangement and hide the address.
The practice does both: An eligible hybrid business can show its clinic address and the areas it actually visits.
Use Edit profile → Location to review the relevant settings. Google provides separate instructions for business addresses and service-area and hybrid businesses.
Serving another town does not automatically justify another profile. A separate location must qualify in its own right. Individual practitioners have separate rules: they must be public-facing and directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours. Support staff do not qualify, and practitioners should not create profiles for each specialty. Check Google’s practitioner guidance before adding one.
For explaining your reach on your own site, see when a therapy practice needs a town or service-area page.
Confirm appropriate hours with the office manager. Where regular hours apply, list the actual customer-facing schedule and set holiday exceptions. Google says businesses operating only by appointment should not provide hours; its editor includes Open with no main hours. Special hours display only when main hours are set. Avoid entering reception hours automatically for an appointment-only practice. Review the hours policy, hours settings and special-hours guidance together.
4. Follow the contact path from the profile
Check: Read the services and description, tap the phone number, open the website and try any appointment link.
Why it matters: Families need to know whether you offer the service they are seeking and what to do next. An outdated offering or broken contact route leaves the office with avoidable confusion.
Correct it: Where the services editor is available, remove discontinued offerings and add the services the clinic actually provides. Suggested and custom service entries are available; custom services are different from business categories. Keep descriptions specific and have the relevant clinical lead check them. See Google’s service-editing instructions.
Use the business description to explain the practice’s services, population served and delivery setting in plain language. Remove unsupported claims and outdated details. Keep it within Google’s 750-character limit and leave URLs out of this field. Google’s profile-editing guidance covers these fields.
Confirm that the phone number reaches the clinic and remains under its control. Make a test call, including the voicemail route, and assign responsibility for returning messages.
The website link should open the most useful page for that location. A single-location homepage may be suitable if it clearly provides the relevant details. If a broad homepage makes families search again, use the clinic location page.
Where appointment links are available, send visitors to a page where families can complete the appointment action offered by that link. Check that it works on a phone and clearly explains whether it confirms a booking or submits an appointment request for the team to review. Review any third-party booking links, too. See Google’s business-link requirements and link-management instructions.
Fictional clinic audit: before and after.
A fictional, single-location clinic providing pediatric ABA, occupational therapy and speech therapy.
Theoretical example for illustration only. Not a real clinic, client project or measured result.
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Phone
Before: Old phone number routes to an unattended voicemail.
After: sensible correction: Confirm the current number and test call routing, including voicemail.
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Website
Before: Website link opens a broad homepage.
After: sensible correction: Link to the relevant clinic location page, with clear contact details.
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Hours
Before: Hours haven’t been reviewed.
After: sensible correction: Verify appropriate hours and holiday exceptions with the clinic. Apply the appointment-only guidance where relevant.
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Photos
Before: Photos don’t show the entrance.
After: sensible correction: Add approved exterior and entrance photos that help first-time visitors. Keep identifiable patients out of view.
What to measure next
Check routing and link function first. Then record the profile metrics available and compare them with answered calls, new inquiries and booked evaluations in the clinic’s own records.
Proposed corrections only. This illustration reports no performance results.
These corrections address specific sources of confusion: where a call goes, which clinic a page describes, whether hours are current and which door to use. Any effect on inquiries would need to be measured after the changes.
5. Add photos that help families recognize the clinic
Check: Can someone identify the building and the correct entrance from the photos? Do the interior images reflect the space today?
Why it matters: Google recommends exterior photos that help visitors recognize a business and interior photos that show the space accurately. For a first visit, a clear image of the entrance can be more useful than another logo. See Google’s business-photo guidance.
Correct it: Take current, well-lit photos of the exterior, entrance and appropriate interior spaces. Have the clinic approve them before upload. Photograph empty rooms, keeping identifiable patients, appointment boards, paperwork and screens with personal information out of view. Replace outdated photos your team controls and review the published images after uploading.
6. Give one person responsibility for keeping it current
Check: Name the person who updates the profile, the backup and the staff member who confirms operational changes.
Why it matters: Hours and phone arrangements can change without anyone remembering the profile. A clear handoff makes an update part of the change itself.
Correct it: Give each authorized person access through their own Google Account. Owners can add managers without sharing passwords. Review access when staff or agency relationships change. Google explains owner and manager permissions.
We suggest a brief monthly review, plus an update whenever a service, phone number, location or schedule changes. Record what changed, who checked it and whether the correction is visible on the public profile.
A brief note on reviews: Our Google review-policy guide covers incentives, pressure and scripted requests. ABA practices also need an ethics and privacy review before requesting testimonials. BACB Ethics Code 5.07 prohibits covered behavior analysts from soliciting current-client or stakeholder testimonials for advertising intended to attract new clients. Have the clinical or compliance lead approve the approach, and keep patient information out of public responses. Read the BACB code.
7. Measure what happened after someone found you
Check: Open Performance for the verified profile and select a reporting period. Record which metrics are actually available.
Why it matters: A tap on a phone number does not establish that someone reached the office, asked about services or booked an evaluation.
Calls: Clicks on the profile’s call button, not confirmed answered calls.
Website clicks: Clicks on the website link, not completed inquiries.
Direction requests: Requests for directions, not confirmed clinic visits.
Bookings, where available: Bookings reported through a supported booking provider, not a complete count of all clinic evaluations.
Google shows only applicable metrics, and its performance data can include activity from Google Ads as well as organic results. Check Google’s current performance definitions. Adding a custom appointment link alone does not provide booking-performance data in the profile. Google explains the booking-provider requirement here.
Correct it: Keep profile activity separate from office outcomes. In the clinic’s approved internal records, count answered calls, new service inquiries and booked evaluations separately. Ask how families found the practice when appropriate, and mark attribution as unknown when it is unknown.
Record the date of each profile correction and compare equal reporting periods. Look for changes in available profile activity alongside the office’s own records, without assuming every increase came from the edit. Keep patient details out of a marketing report.
If your team needs help checking its local information and deciding what to correct first, explore Driftlss’s SEO service. We can start with the details families rely on to find and contact your practice.
