Should every dentist at our practice have their own Google Business Profile?

The short answer

Three things get mixed up here: the practice's profile, a dentist's profile, and a dentist's page on your website. Google has rules for the first two. The third is up to you, and it's where most practices we checked fell short.

What Google's rules say

Google treats dentists as individual practitioners. A dentist can have their own profile if they work in a public-facing role and can be contacted directly at the verified location during its stated hours.

Google doesn't limit practitioner profiles to owners or specialists. Nor does it require them: a practice can choose to have only its own profile.

What practice websites show

We checked 128 practice websites in the UK, Australia and the US. 77% named two or more dentists. But only 48% of those gave each dentist a page of their own, so on half the sites a dentist's profile has nowhere specific to link to.

• Only 19 of 132 dentist pages we opened (14%) had a booking link that appeared to choose that dentist. The rest sent people to a general booking form.
• Registration numbers were common in the UK and rare elsewhere: 72% of UK sites showed a GDC number, 17% of Australian sites an AHPRA number, and no US site a state licence number.
• 28% of dentist pages described the dentist in structured data as a person; the rest relied on the visible text alone.

What we found in Google Maps

We then followed 15 of those practices, five per country, into Google Maps: one branch each, and the first two dentists named on each practice's team page, 30 searches in all.

Most dentists searched didn't show a personal profile, which is fine: it's optional. Of the 9 that did, 7 used the dentist's name only and 1 combined the practice and dentist names. One search for a founder led to the practice's own profile, which already carried the founder's name, so we didn't count it as a personal profile.

Where it breaks

• The link goes to the homepage. Seven of the eight personal profiles with a website link sent people to the practice homepage, even where the dentist had a page of their own. Someone who searched for a particular dentist lands on a general page and has to start again. It isn't against Google's rules; it's a missed step.
• Different addresses. At two practices, both dentists' personal profiles showed a different address from the practice's website and main profile: a different suite number at one, a different street at the other. We don't know which is current, and it may be an old address. Either way, a patient can't tell.
• A booking link that doesn't book. One dentist's personal booking link, through a third-party directory, showed an apology screen on two loads, while the practice's own booking page worked. A working practice booking system doesn't prove every profile's link works.
• Leftover text. One practice's team page described its commitment to patients using another practice's name and suburbs, a sign the page was built from someone else's template. We've written about how often this happens in leftover template text.

None of these needs more profiles. Each needs one fact corrected, in every place it appears.

Keep one register

Before adding or changing any profile, list each clinician in one place: name as shown to patients, role, registration number where it applies, which branches and days, their page on your website, their profile if they have one, where that profile links, where its booking button goes, and the date you last checked. Update it when someone joins or leaves.

• Link each dentist's profile to their own page, and give that page a way to book them.
• Make the address, phone and hours on each profile match the branch they actually work at.
• When a dentist leaves, update or close their profile rather than leaving it to drift.
• Check every booking link from the profile, not just from your website.

We cover clinics more broadly, including registration and review rules, on our SEO for clinics page.

What AI tools said when we asked

We asked Perplexity and Gemini our question word for word on 24 October. Both answered no, not automatically. Perplexity cited ten sources, none of them Google's own guidelines: they were marketing agencies, a contributor column and a dental trade magazine. Gemini's first answer cited three agency pages; asked again, it cited four sources including Google's guidelines, and it advised limiting profiles more tightly than Google's rules do. ChatGPT blocked our logged-out session, so it wasn't tested.

The same question gave different sources minutes apart, and the most authoritative source appeared in only one of three answers. Check the rules at the source.

How we checked

Two steps, one feeding the next. First, 128 practice websites were checked for named dentists, dentist pages, registration numbers, structured data and booking links. Second, 15 of those practices, five per country, were followed by hand: we recorded the team page, the practice's Maps profile, and the result of searching the first two dentists named, with the website and booking destination of every profile found.

Limits

• Fifteen practices is a small hand-checked sample. It shows what goes wrong, not how often across all practices.
• Maps was viewed logged out from outside the UK, US and Australia, in a limited view.
• A different address on a profile may be out of date or may be a second location; we didn't contact the practices.
• Detecting a dentist-specific booking link on websites was approximate.