A note from Chris: Google has clearly decided it’s tidy-up season. This week brought a crackdown on low-quality content and a string of changes that tighten the rules around your Google profile – the panel that appears when someone Googles your clinic. None of it is scary if your house is in order, but now is genuinely a good time to keep a closer eye on that profile, make sure it follows Google’s rules, and have an honest look at any old, thin or duplicated pages on your website. Here’s what happened, and what to do about it.
Google is having a clear-out – worth tidying up before it reaches you
Google switched on a “spam update” on 24 September – one of its periodic clean-ups of pages it thinks are low quality or trying to game the system – and this one is rolling out slowly, over up to two weeks. In the same week, researchers spotted that Google has quietly built a new AI-powered detector designed to catch mass-produced, low-effort content, including the sort churned out by AI tools.
A clinic website with genuinely helpful pages has nothing to fear here. The pages that do get caught are the padding: thin old blog posts nobody reads, and near-identical “physio in [town]” pages repeated for every village in the area.
What this means for you: Don’t panic if your website traffic wobbles between now and early October – that’s the update settling, not a verdict on your clinic. But do take this as your nudge to review old, low-quality content and any duplicated location pages, and either improve them or retire them. If we look after your website, this is on our list already.
Sources: Search Engine Roundtable – the September spam update and Search Engine Journal – Google’s new AI content detector
Sharing a building with other clinics? Read this one
Lots of clinicians work from shared premises – a physio, a sports massage therapist and a podiatrist all under one roof. This week Google clarified exactly when businesses at the same address can each have their own Google profile: only when they’re genuinely different businesses in different lines of work. Their test is blunt – if the second business could just be a page on the first one’s website, it doesn’t get its own listing.
Several similar clinics at one address, each with its own profile, is exactly the pattern Google’s filters look for – and listings can get filtered out or suspended.
What this means for you: If you’re in a building full of similar practitioners, it may be worth thinking about one website and one Google profile for the building or clinic as a whole, rather than everyone fighting for their own listing. That’s not a small decision – there’s real upheaval in merging things – but it can be safer and stronger than several profiles competing with (and occasionally sinking) each other. Talk to us before changing anything.
Source: Sterling Sky – two business profiles at the same address
Your Google profile needs a bit more babysitting
Three separate changes this week, all pointing the same way. First, if a member of the public suggests an edit to your Google profile – your hours, your phone number, your services – you now have just 4 days to reject it before Google may publish it anyway. Second, Google has got stricter about posts on your profile: put a phone number, email or social media handle in the text of a post and the post may be removed. And third, if Google’s systems think you’ve had a suspicious burst of new reviews, they’ll now pause all new reviews on your profile while they investigate – and that filter has already caught at least one business whose reviews were perfectly genuine, just arriving quickly.
What this means for you: This is the “keep an eye on it” week. Don’t ignore emails from Google about your profile – one of them might be a 4-day countdown. Keep contact details out of the text of your posts (the button underneath does that job). And ask patients for reviews at a steady trickle rather than a big blitz, especially if you’ve just opened a new location. If we manage your profile, we’re watching all three of these for you.
Sources: Search Engine Roundtable – the 4-day edit window, stricter rules on contact info in posts and review pauses after a spike
Why some of your reviews now say “Edited”
You may have noticed an “Edited” label appearing on some of your Google reviews. It’s nothing to worry about – the label appears even if someone just reopened their review and re-posted it unchanged. Part of what’s driving it: Google is now emailing people who left short reviews and nudging them to add more detail, because it’s pushing for quality over quantity – and short, generic reviews are increasingly at risk of being quietly filtered out altogether.
What this means for you: The label itself needs no action. The useful bit is the trend behind it – a detailed review that mentions the treatment and the experience is worth far more than a two-word “great physio!”. When you ask a happy patient for a review, it’s fine to say “a sentence or two about what we helped with makes a big difference”.
Source: Sterling Sky – what the “Edited” label means
Being number one on Google isn’t quite what it used to be
An eye-opening piece of research this week: one large local business saw its Google rankings improve 20–30% over the year – while its clicks and calls fell by around 40%. Ads and AI answers are soaking up more of the screen, so a good ranking converts into fewer phone calls than it once did. The same research looked at where ChatGPT gets its local recommendations from, and the answer was surprising: directories and sites like Bing and Yelp – not Google reviews at all. And review counts helped AI visibility only up to around 200 reviews, after which the benefit levelled off.
What this means for you: If enquiries dip while your rankings look fine, this is often why – the measuring stick is changing, not your clinic. The practical moves: keep your details complete and consistent everywhere (not just Google), and start asking every new patient “how did you find us?” – it’s quietly becoming the most valuable question at reception.
Source: Near Media – what AI visibility is really worth to local businesses
In healthcare, trust is the whole game
A good discussion in the healthcare marketing world this week about what AI search changes for clinics. The short version: patients have to trust the health information they read, and now the AI tools have to trust the clinics they recommend – and both of those point back to the same thing. A clear, well-organised website with consistent information and real clinicians’ names on the content is what earns both. The panellists’ warning was about fragmentation: scattered pages and inconsistent descriptions of your services confuse AI tools just as much as they confuse patients.
What this means for you: The boring fundamentals – one tidy website, consistent contact details, your actual clinicians named on your pages – are exactly what AI search rewards. No new tricks required; the trustworthy clinic wins twice.
Source: Healthcare Success – AI search, brand trust and the future of healthcare marketing
And finally: those AI answers keep spreading
New figures show the AI-written answers at the top of Google now appear in 39% of desktop searches in the US – up from 26% a year ago. The UK tends to follow. No action needed; it’s simply the backdrop to everything above, and why we keep banging on about trust, reviews and complete profiles.
Source: Search Engine Land – AI Overviews reach 39% of US desktop searches
Questions about any of this? Just ask – explaining it is literally what we’re here for.