Which part of a chiropractic Google Business Profile breaks first?
Short answer
The Posts field, because it is written weekly and reviewed never. Chiropractic marketing runs on offers, and the National Law requires any advertised gift, discount or inducement to state its terms. Google's Offer post type has a terms and conditions field built in. The requirement and the field already match. Almost nobody fills it.
Key points
Google offers three post types: Updates, Offers and Events. The Offer type includes fields for a coupon code, a link and terms and conditions.
Section 133 of the National Law prohibits advertising a regulated health service offering a gift, discount or other inducement unless the advertisement also states the terms and conditions.
AHPRA expects those terms to be in plain language, and names prizes, discounts, bonuses and gifts that encourage use regardless of clinical need among the things that may breach the law.
Posts older than 6 months are archived unless a date range is set, so an unreviewed offer can sit on a profile for half a year.
Google's own post rules also bar regulated industries from including product content, and require links to trusted sites.
Which part of a chiropractic profile is written weekly and audited never?
Posts. Every other field on a Business Profile is set up once, argued about, and then largely left alone. The category gets decided at launch. The services list gets a look when somebody redesigns the website. The description is written by whoever cared most at the time.
Posts are different in the way that matters. They are produced on a cadence, usually weekly, usually quickly, often by whoever has ten minutes, and frequently by an agency rather than the practice. Nobody reviews last month's.
That matters more for chiropractic than for most trades, because of a fact the combo page sets out: the practitioner is personally liable for the advertising copy attached to the profile, including copy written by somebody else. We covered how that liability works in Google Business Profile for chiropractors and in what a chiropractor can claim to treat.
Put those together. The highest-frequency, lowest-scrutiny field on the profile is the one attached to personal liability. That is where a profile breaks.
What are the three post types, and which one catches a chiropractor?
Google provides Updates, Offers and Events, and they are not equally risky for a chiropractic practice.
Updates share information about the business, with a description, photo, video and an action button. Events promote something at the practice with a title, start and end dates and times, and Google notes that if no times are given the event shows as lasting 24 hours on those dates.
Offers are the one to look at. Google describes them as promotional sales or deals, with a title, dates and time, an automatic View Offer button, and fields for a description, photo, video, coupon code, link, and terms and conditions.
Read that last list again, because chiropractic marketing lives in it. Free spinal check. Discounted first consultation. Posture screening week. New patient rate. Those are offers in exactly Google's sense, and they are also something else.
Why is a free spinal check an inducement?
Because that is precisely what the National Law calls it, and the provision is specific rather than general.
Section 133 prohibits advertising a regulated health service in a way that offers a gift, discount or other inducement to attract a person to use the service or the business, unless the advertisement also states the terms and conditions of the offer. AHPRA adds that the terms should be provided in plain language, and its guidance names incentives such as prizes, discounts, bonuses and gifts that would encourage people to use services regardless of clinical need or therapeutic benefit as the kind of advertising that may breach the law.
Notice the structure of the rule. It is not a ban on offers. It is a condition on them. An offer with its terms stated is permitted. The same offer without them is not, and the omission is the breach rather than the discount.
Penalties attach, and they have moved, so we have kept the current figure in one place rather than repeating it here. It is in what a chiropractor can claim to treat along with the prosecution that made the point.
Has Google already built the field the chiropractic rule asks for?
Which is the neatest part of this, and the reason a chiropractic practice has no excuse on it.
The requirement is that an advertised inducement states its terms and conditions. The Offer post type contains a terms and conditions field. The obligation and the interface line up exactly, without anybody having to be clever.
So the compliant version of a chiropractic offer post is not a rewrite. It is the same post with a field filled in. What the offer covers. Who is eligible. What it excludes. How long it runs. What happens at the appointment and what it costs afterwards. That is the plain-language terms AHPRA is asking for, and it fits.
There is a commercial argument alongside the regulatory one. An offer with its terms visible attracts fewer people who were never going to proceed, which is a better outcome for a practice than a diary full of free checks that convert at nothing.
How long does a bad chiropractic post stay up?
Longer than most practices assume, and the answer suggests how to use the format properly.
Google says posts older than 6 months are archived unless a date range is set. So an Update posted in January with a loose claim in it is still on the profile in June, having been written in ten minutes and read by nobody since.
The clause after the comma is the useful bit. Setting a date range gives the post an end. An Offer with a start and finish expires on its own, which means the practice is not relying on somebody remembering to remove a promotion that ended in spring.
That turns a compliance chore into a default. Use the Offer type with real dates for anything promotional, and the profile cleans itself. Use an undated Update for the same content and you have created a six-month advertisement that nobody owns.
What else do Google's post rules restrict for a chiropractic practice?
A short list, and one line in it is worth a chiropractic practice reading twice.
Posts should be professional, without misspellings or distracting content, and family-friendly.
Links must direct to trusted sites, with no malware, phishing or pornographic destinations.
Regulated industries including pharmaceuticals can use posts but cannot include product content, which is Google's own restriction and separate from anything a health regulator imposes.
Phone numbers in a post description may be rejected where they cannot be verified as connected to the business.
All the details should be complete and relevant, which is Google's framing rather than a specific prohibition.
What does a compliant chiropractic post look like?
What the practice posts
Is it safe
Why
Free spinal check this month, as an undated Update
No
An inducement without stated terms, live for six months
Free spinal check as an Offer with terms filled in
Yes
The terms and conditions field meets the section 133 condition
Discounted first consultation, no exclusions given
No
Terms are the condition on the offer, not an optional extra
A post naming a condition outside your permitted list
No
A claim is a claim in any field of the profile
An Event post for a posture workshop, with dates
Yes
Dated, self-expiring, and not an inducement
An Update explaining what happens at a first appointment
Yes
Process content, no claim, no inducement
What should a chiropractic practice put in place?
A process rather than a policy, because the failure here is operational rather than intellectual. Nobody at these practices believes an untermed offer is fine. They just did not read it before it went up.
Decide who writes posts and who checks them, and write both names down. Personal liability does not move because an agency drafted it.
Use the Offer type with a date range for anything promotional, so the post expires without anybody remembering.
Fill the terms and conditions field every single time, in plain language covering eligibility, exclusions, duration and what happens next.
Read your archive. Posts from the last six months are still visible and still yours.
Keep the useful non-promotional posts coming, since process and access content carries no claim and no inducement, and it is the kind of material that works elsewhere too, as in why AI assistants hedge on chiropractic.
Related questions
Can a chiropractic practice advertise a free spinal check at all?
In Australia, yes, provided the advertisement also states the terms and conditions of the offer, in plain language. Section 133 conditions inducements rather than banning them. The breach is the missing terms, not the discount, and Google's Offer post type has a field for exactly that.
What counts as terms and conditions on a chiropractic offer?
Enough for somebody to know what they are agreeing to before they book. What the offer covers, who is eligible, what it excludes, when it starts and ends, and what happens and what it costs after the discounted appointment. AHPRA asks for plain language, so write it as sentences rather than legal boilerplate.
How long do Google posts stay on a chiropractic profile?
Google says posts older than 6 months are archived unless a date range is set. So an undated promotional post can sit on the profile for half a year. Setting a date range on an Offer makes it expire on its own, which is the simplest fix available here.
Our agency writes our chiropractic posts. Does that change the liability?
No. The practitioner remains responsible for advertising attached to the practice, including copy they did not write, which is covered in the pillar with the case that established it. If an agency posts on your behalf, the review step has to sit with somebody at the practice.
We are a UK chiropractic practice. Does section 133 apply?
No, that is the Australian National Law. UK offers sit under the CAP Code, which has its own requirements on significant conditions and on what a chiropractor may claim. The transferable point is the same: the terms are part of the offer, and Google has already given you the field.