Backlinko's 2024 analysis found 42% of local searchers click the map pack rather than any website at all. For a veterinary practice that means your Google Business Profile is not a supporting asset — for a large share of your prospective clients it is the website, and it is the one you have most likely never finished filling in.
Why this comes first
A new site takes weeks and costs money. The profile takes an afternoon and costs nothing, and the two compete for the same click. We have had practices come to us for a rebuild where the honest advice was: fix the profile, wait six weeks, and then decide whether you still need us.
If your profile is half-finished, a new website is the second-best thing you could do this month.
Categories, which decide everything
Your primary category does more to determine which searches you appear in than any other field. Most veterinary practices are set to Veterinarian and stop there, which is correct but incomplete.
- Primary: Veterinarian for a general practice. Emergency veterinarian service if that is genuinely what you are — and do not claim it if you close at seven, because the review you get at midnight will be brutal.
- Secondary categories for what you really do: Animal hospital, Pet groomer, Kennel, Pet boarding service, Veterinary pharmacy. Only add what you actually offer; irrelevant categories dilute rather than widen.
- Specialists: if you are exotics-led, say so. There are far fewer practices competing for “exotic pet veterinarian” than for “veterinarian”, and the people searching it are much further down the line to booking.
Services and attributes
The services list is free text and almost nobody fills it in. Add the things people search by name: dentistry, spay and neuter, vaccinations, microchipping, senior wellness, end-of-life care, laser therapy, in-house laboratory. Each becomes a surface people can match against.
Attributes matter more than they look. “Wheelchair accessible entrance”, “appointment required”, “on-site parking”, “LGBTQ+ friendly”, “identifies as women-owned” — these appear in the profile, get used as filters, and are exactly the kind of concrete fact an AI assistant can quote back. See getting cited by AI search for why that is increasingly worth having.
Hours, including the holidays
Two failures are near-universal in this industry.
- Holiday hours are never set. Google will show your normal hours on Thanksgiving unless you tell it otherwise, and somebody will drive to a locked door and leave a one-star review that is entirely your fault. Set every federal holiday at the start of the year; it takes ten minutes.
- Lunch closures are not reflected. If reception is unstaffed from one to two, say so. A missed call at 1.15 is a client who rang the next practice on the list.
iVET360's 2026 figures put the share of consumers who will avoid a business with incorrect online information at 62%. Hours are the information they mean.
Photos that are not stock
Profile photos are one of the few places where real beats polished every time. What to upload, in order of value:
- The front of the building, from the road, in daylight. This is the photo that stops people driving past. More practices get this wrong than right.
- The car park and the entrance. Genuinely useful, almost never provided.
- The waiting room, unstaged. Including the cat area if you have one.
- Your actual team. Not models. A real vet with a real patient does more for trust than any amount of copy.
Refresh them annually. A profile whose newest photo is from 2019 reads as a practice that may not still exist.
Reviews as a routine
Recency beats volume. Forty reviews from the past six months generally outperform two hundred that mostly date from several years ago, because a stale review set is itself a signal.
What works, practically: ask at discharge, every time, with a short link on the invoice or a text afterwards. Do not filter who you ask — selectively soliciting only happy clients is against Google's terms and produces a review profile that reads as fake anyway. Reply to everything, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing.
Posts, Q&A and the bits nobody uses
- Q&A is owner-answerable. You can ask and answer your own questions. Seed it with the ten things your front desk is asked daily — species you see, whether you take walk-ins, where to go out of hours.
- Posts are low-effort and modestly useful. A holiday hours notice, a new vet joining, a seasonal reminder. Monthly is plenty.
- Messaging: turn it off unless somebody is genuinely watching it. An unanswered message is worse than no messaging button.
A twenty-minute audit
Open your profile and check, in order: primary category correct; three to five accurate secondary categories; services list populated; attributes set; holiday hours entered for the next twelve months; at least one current photo of the building from the road; newest review inside the last month; Q&A seeded; phone number identical to the one on your website; address identical to the one on your website.
If more than three of those fail, that is your next month's project, and it will outperform anything else you could buy. Then go and read local SEO for veterinary clinics for what comes after.
Questions we get asked
What should a veterinary clinic's primary Google category be?
Veterinarian for a general practice. Use Emergency veterinarian service only if you genuinely operate out of hours. Add accurate secondary categories such as Animal hospital, Pet boarding service or Veterinary pharmacy for the services you really offer, and leave off anything you do not.
Do Google Business Profile photos affect veterinary rankings?
Indirectly. Photos do not rank you, but a profile with current, real photographs of the building, car park, waiting room and team earns more clicks and calls, and engagement feeds back into local visibility. The highest-value photo is the front of the building from the road in daylight.
How often should a veterinary practice ask for Google reviews?
Continuously, as a routine rather than a campaign. Recency matters more than total volume, and a practice with forty reviews from the last six months typically outperforms one with two hundred that are mostly several years old.
Should I set holiday hours on my veterinary Google profile?
Yes, and almost nobody does. Google displays your regular hours on holidays unless you override them, which reliably produces a client at a locked door and a one-star review. Set every federal holiday at the start of each year.
Can I answer my own questions in Google Q&A?
Yes. Owners can post and answer their own questions, and seeding the section with the ten things your front desk is asked daily is one of the quickest wins available on the profile.