What exactly is included in the one-time GBP optimization?+
Everything needed to take your profile from incomplete to fully optimized in one pass: a written 47-point audit with a competitor benchmark of the three clinics currently in your Maps 3-pack; correction of your primary category and addition of up to 9 secondary categories; a rewritten business description; every service you offer listed with a keyworded description; products and treatment listings; attributes, amenities and service areas; accurate hours plus a 12-month holiday calendar; a 20+ photo upload plan with a shoot brief if you need new images; 10 patient Q&As seeded and answered from the owner account; your first 4 Google Posts; UTM-tagged website and booking links so profile traffic is measurable in GA4; a short review link with a printable QR code for your reception desk; and a before/after report documenting every checkpoint we moved. It is a complete rebuild of the profile's structure and assets — not a cosmetic touch-up.
How long does the optimization take?+
Seven working days per location, and the schedule is fixed. Days 1–2 are audit and access: we take manager access to your profile (never ownership — the profile always remains yours), score it against all 47 checkpoints and benchmark your 3-pack competitors. Days 3–4 are the structural fix: categories, description, services, products, attributes, hours and NAP details. Days 5–6 are asset building: photos uploaded, Q&As seeded, first posts published, tracking links installed. Day 7 is reporting and handover. The only thing that ever extends the timeline is waiting on inputs from your side — typically photos or confirmation of your service list — which is why we send a short intake checklist the day you sign up. Multi-location projects run in weekly batches so a 5-clinic group is typically complete within 3–4 weeks.
How is this different from your monthly Google Patient Flow service?+
This is a one-time structural fix; Google Patient Flow (₹4,500/month) is ongoing management. The one-time optimization rebuilds the foundation — categories, services, photos, Q&A, tracking — which most profiles need done exactly once. Monthly management is everything that has to keep happening after that: weekly Google Posts, new photo uploads, review responses within 24 hours, Q&A monitoring, spam-listing and edit-attack defence, monthly performance reports and seasonal hours updates. Think of it as surgery versus physiotherapy: the optimization corrects the structure, management maintains and compounds it. Many clinics start with the one-time fix, watch the 60-day numbers, and then upgrade to Google Patient Flow — and if you upgrade within 60 days, we credit part of your optimization fee against the first quarter. Neither requires the other; the one-time fix delivers standalone value even if we never speak again.
How much does it cost, and how does billing work?+
₹7,500 + GST one-time for a single location. For groups optimizing 3 or more locations, the rate drops to ₹6,000 + GST per location. Hospital groups with department pages and individual practitioner listings get a custom quote, because practitioner-listing strategy (avoiding duplicate-listing suspensions between the hospital, departments and doctors) needs its own scoping. Billing is simple: 100% upfront on a proforma invoice, GST invoice issued on payment, work starts within 2 working days and delivery is in 7. There is no retainer, no lock-in and nothing recurring — the only ongoing cost you'll ever hear about is the optional upgrade to monthly management, and only if you ask. If our audit finds your profile is already in the top decile and doesn't need the work, we tell you before taking payment.
Do you work with international clinics, and how are they billed?+
Yes. Roughly a fifth of our optimization work is outside India — primarily the UAE, Singapore and Southeast Asia, plus UK and US practices. Google Business Profile is the same product in every country, and the 47 checkpoints apply identically; what changes is the regulatory wrapper. In Dubai we keep descriptions and posts consistent with DHA advertising guidelines; in Singapore we respect SMC's restrictions on superlatives and testimonials in the description and posts we write. International clients are quoted in USD, AED or their local currency at a converted equivalent of the ₹ pricing, invoiced electronically, and pay by card or bank transfer. All calls run on Zoom or Google Meet in your timezone, and access is handled through Google's standard manager-invite flow, so geography adds zero friction to the 7-day timeline.
Will this get my clinic into the Google Maps 3-pack?+
An honest answer: the 3-pack is decided by relevance, distance and prominence, and this service maximizes the first and supports the third — nobody can change where your clinic physically sits. What we can say from 300+ healthcare profiles: the correct primary category alone is the single heaviest lever, and 58% of the clinic profiles we audit have it wrong. Adding complete services, attributes and photos expands the number of searches your profile is eligible to appear for — that's why our Jaipur dental case entered the 3-pack for 14 keywords from one sprint. Where competition is brutal (say, dermatology in Bandra or Dubai Marina), the one-time fix gets you competitive, and ongoing review velocity and posting — the monthly-management side — decides the tiebreak. We show you the competitor benchmark up front so you know exactly which fights are winnable in 60 days and which need sustained work.
Is optimization safe under Google's guidelines and India's medical advertising rules?+
Yes, and this is precisely why healthcare profiles should not be optimized by generalist freelancers. On the Google side, every edit follows the Business Profile guidelines: real business name (no keyword stuffing like 'Best Dentist in Delhi — Dr. Sharma', which risks suspension), accurate categories, genuine photos and no review gating. On the medical side, we write descriptions, services and posts consistent with NMC's Professional Conduct regulations — no superlative claims, no guaranteed cures, no misleading before/after framing — and we structure the review link flow so you're inviting feedback, not soliciting or incentivizing reviews, which both Google and medical councils prohibit. Patient data touched during setup (for example in Q&A answers) is handled in line with DPDP Act principles: we never publish identifiable patient information. For UAE and Singapore clinics, DHA and SMC advertising norms are applied to the copy we write. Every change is logged, so you have an audit trail.
We already have good reviews. Do we still need this?+
Reviews are one of roughly a dozen levers, and strong reviews on a structurally broken profile are like great word-of-mouth for a clinic with no signboard. Google matches profiles to searches primarily through categories, services and content — if your primary category is wrong or your services are empty, your five-star rating never gets the chance to convert a searcher, because you don't appear for most treatment queries in the first place. Our Dubai dermatology case is the template here: excellent reviews, weak structure, and a doubling of direction requests once the structure was fixed — the reviews finally had an audience. The optimization also makes your reviews work harder: the short review link and QR code lift review velocity, and seeded Q&As handle fee and insurance objections so a positive rating turns into a call rather than more research. If both your structure and your reviews are already excellent, our audit will say so — and we'd rather tell you that than sell you a fix you don't need.
What happens after the 7 days — who maintains the profile?+
You own everything, and you can maintain it yourself. The handover pack includes a one-page maintenance sheet covering the four things that need ongoing attention: posting cadence (one Google Post a week is enough), photo freshness (2–3 new photos a month), review responses (reply within 24–48 hours, templates included) and hours updates ahead of holidays. Many front-desk teams run this in 30 minutes a week. We also schedule a free 90-day snapshot: we re-pull your calls, direction requests and search-appearance data and send a short comparison against the before/after baseline, so you can see the trajectory without paying anything further. If you'd rather not manage it — or you're in a competitive market where weekly activity decides 3-pack positions — the upgrade path is Google Patient Flow at ₹4,500/month, which takes over all of it plus spam-listing defence and monthly reporting. There is no pressure and no auto-enrolment; the one-time service is genuinely complete on its own.
Does this work for specific specialties like dental, IVF or dermatology?+
Yes — in fact specialty-specific category and service architecture is where most generic optimizations fail. A dental clinic should carry 'Dental clinic' as primary with secondaries like 'Dental implants periodontist', 'Orthodontist' and 'Pediatric dentist' mapped to actual chairside services; an IVF centre needs 'Fertility clinic' plus service entries for IUI, ICSI, egg freezing and fertility assessment, with Q&As addressing cost ranges and success-rate questions compliantly; dermatology profiles need the medical/cosmetic split reflected in services so both 'skin specialist' and treatment-name searches match. Physiotherapy, ophthalmology (LASIK vs. cataract vs. retina services), hair transplant and diagnostics each have their own category trees we've mapped across 300+ profiles. The 47 checkpoints are constant; the category strategy, service naming and Q&A seeding are built per specialty. If you run a multi-specialty hospital, we architect the hospital-department-practitioner hierarchy so listings reinforce rather than cannibalize each other.