Is your Google Business Profile regulated advertising?
Short answer
For a regulated health practice, yes. AHPRA's definition of advertising explicitly includes public and professional directory listings or similar, which places a Google Business Profile under the same rules as your website and your paid ads. This matters because the standard local-SEO advice for dentists is to add secondary categories such as Orthodontist or Periodontist, and in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom those are protected titles that a dentist without specialist registration may not use. The profile is treated as a ranking surface by almost everyone writing about it, and as an advertising surface by the people who can fine you.
Key points
AHPRA lists public and professional directory listings among the things that count as advertising, which brings a Google Business Profile inside the National Law.
Google's own guidelines name dentists as individual practitioners entitled to their own profile separate from the practice, so a practitioner listing is advertising by that practitioner.
GDC guidance states a dentist not on a GDC specialist list must not use titles implying specialist status such as Orthodontist, Periodontist or Endodontist.
AHPRA states there is no dental specialty in cosmetic or aesthetic dentistry, so cosmetic dentistry specialist is incorrect terminology, not just marketing licence.
The Dental Council of New Zealand names implantology and cosmetic dentistry as areas with no recognised specialist scope in its Advertising Practice Standard.
Section 133 penalties in Australia are AUD 60,000 per offence for an individual and AUD 120,000 for a body corporate, raised from AUD 5,000 and AUD 10,000 by the 2022 amendment.
A peer-reviewed audit found only 11% of 100 UK websites advertising aligner therapy were fully compliant with GDC advertising guidance.
Does a Google Business Profile count as advertising?
Under the Australian rules, plainly yes, and the regulator says so in a list rather than leaving it to interpretation.
AHPRA's guidelines enumerate what constitutes advertising: television, radio, podcasts, newspapers, flyers, billboards, business cards, office signs, shopfronts, letterheads, and public and professional directory listings or similar. A Google Business Profile is a public directory listing. It sits inside that definition alongside a billboard.
Google's own guidelines push in the same direction. They name dentists explicitly as individual practitioners, defined as public-facing professionals typically with their own customer base, and entitled to a profile separate from the practice. So a practitioner profile is that practitioner advertising themselves, which is exactly the thing the National Law regulates.
The consequence is that every field you fill in is a claim you are making in public. Categories, business description, services, photographs, Posts, replies to reviews. Advice that treats those as ranking levers and nothing else is only describing half of what they are.
Which profile fields are actually regulated?
Most of them, and the mapping is more direct than it first appears.
Profile field
What regulates it
Primary and secondary categories
Specialist-title rules. Orthodontist and Periodontist are protected titles in the UK and restricted in Australia and New Zealand
Business description
Misleading-advertising rules, and specialist-title rules if it says specialises in
Services list
Claim substantiation. In Australia, cosmetic veneers now sit under the higher-risk cosmetic advertising guidelines
Photographs
Before-and-after image rules, patient consent, and in Dubai, pre-approval
Posts
Same as any other advertisement. Offers and discounts must state their terms
Review replies
Health privacy law. In the US, HIPAA applies to the reply itself. In Australia, interacting with a positive review may itself be using a testimonial
Practitioner profiles
Registration details. Australian advertising naming an individual for higher-risk cosmetic work must show their registration number
Can a dentist list Orthodontist as a category?
Only if they hold the registration that title implies, and in most cases they do not.
The United Kingdom is the most explicit. GDC guidance permits a dentist on a GDC specialist list to use the title Specialist or to describe themselves as a specialist in something. A dentist not on a specialist list must not use titles which may imply specialist status such as Orthodontist, Periodontist or Endodontist. Those are the exact strings that appear in Google's category list.
Australia arrives at the same place by a different route. AHPRA's position is that any advertising using words or titles related to specialty is likely to mislead the public unless the practitioner holds specialist registration in a recognised specialty. It goes further on one point that catches cosmetic practices in particular: there is no dental specialty in cosmetic or aesthetic dentistry. Cosmetic dentistry specialist is not an overstatement, it is a description of a specialty that does not exist.
New Zealand's Dental Council reaches the same conclusion in its Advertising Practice Standard, advising against specialist, specialist in, or specialising in for practitioners working in an area with no recognised specialist scope, and naming implantology and cosmetic dentistry as its examples.
So the single most repeated piece of dental SEO advice, add your treatment specialisms as secondary categories, is in three markets an instruction to publish a claim about registration you may not hold.
What does each market actually allow?
The differences are large enough that guidance written for one country is actively wrong in another. Two of these will surprise most practices.
Market
Patient testimonials
Specialist titles
Australia
Prohibited where they concern clinical care, under section 133
Restricted to specialist registration. No cosmetic or aesthetic dental specialty exists
New Zealand
Permitted with written permission, verified as genuine, current and typical
Avoid where no recognised specialist scope exists, including implantology and cosmetic dentistry
United Kingdom
Permitted, subject to CAP Code substantiation rules
Protected. Not on a GDC specialist list means not using the title
Dubai and UAE
Permitted with written patient consent. Not permitted with identifying details
Governed by DHA licensing of the facility and practitioner
United States
Permitted, but a reply confirming someone is a patient is a HIPAA disclosure
Governed by state dental board rules
How badly do dental websites actually comply?
Badly, and unusually for this subject there is peer-reviewed measurement rather than agency assertion.
A cross-sectional audit published in the British Dental Journal in April 2023 examined 100 UK websites advertising aligner therapy against GDC guidance. Only 11% were fully compliant, and 72% did not display the date the site was last updated, which is itself a mandatory item.
More recent work in the Journal of Orthodontics, published March 2026 from searches run in 2025, assessed UK orthodontic appliance websites against the CAP Code. Only 4% of advertising claims were substantiated with evidence, and 95% of sites omitted the common risks of treatment.
An earlier British Dental Journal audit of the top fifty Google results for dental implant work found 68% claimed the clinician was a GDC registered specialist, in a field where the specialist lists do not always support that claim.
Read together, these say something useful about your competitive position. If most practices in your market are non-compliant, compliance is not merely risk reduction. It is a differentiator you can point at.
What should you check on your profile today?
None of this needs a lawyer to begin. These are the checks that catch the common failures, in the order they are most often wrong.
Open your categories, primary and secondary. For each one, ask whether it names a title you hold registration for. Remove any that do not.
Search your business description and services for specialises, specialist, specialty and expert. Each one is a claim about registration in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
Check whether any practitioner has a separate profile you have forgotten about. It is advertising by that practitioner and it is likely years out of date.
Look at your photographs for before-and-after pairs. If you operate in Australia and the work is cosmetic, they now sit under separate rules.
Read your last ten review replies and ask whether any confirms that the reviewer was a patient.
If you have a UK website, confirm it shows the practitioner's country of qualification, the GDC registration number, a link to the GDC, a complaints procedure and the date last updated. Most do not.
Does this mean the usual local SEO advice is wrong?
Not wrong, incomplete. The ranking mechanics that generic guides describe are broadly accurate. Categories really are the highest-leverage field. Reviews really do drive visibility. Photographs really do help.
What those guides omit is that a regulated practice is filling in the same fields under a second set of rules that nobody writing about local SEO has read. The optimisation advice and the compliance requirement point in opposite directions at exactly the highest-value keyword: the treatment you most want to be found for is often the one you are least free to claim.
Getting both right at once is possible. It requires knowing which of the two constraints binds first, which changes by market and by the registration the practitioner actually holds.
Is a Google Business Profile advertising under the National Law?
Yes. AHPRA's guidelines list public and professional directory listings or similar among the forms advertising takes, alongside billboards, business cards and shopfronts. A Google Business Profile is a public directory listing, so the advertising provisions apply to what you put in it.
Can a general dentist use Orthodontist as a secondary category?
In the UK, no. GDC guidance states a dentist not on a GDC specialist list must not use titles which may imply specialist status such as Orthodontist, Periodontist or Endodontist. Australia and New Zealand restrict specialist terminology on similar grounds, so the category should match the registration actually held.
Is there such a thing as a cosmetic dentistry specialist?
Not as a registered specialty. AHPRA states there is no dental specialty in cosmetic or aesthetic dentistry, and the Dental Council of New Zealand names cosmetic dentistry and implantology as areas with no recognised specialist scope. The term describes work, not registration.
What are the penalties for getting advertising wrong in Australia?
Section 133 of the National Law carries a maximum of AUD 60,000 per offence for an individual and AUD 120,000 for a body corporate. Those figures were raised from AUD 5,000 and AUD 10,000 by the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2022.
Do these rules apply to an individual dentist's own profile as well as the practice?
Yes, and arguably more directly. Google's guidelines name dentists as individual practitioners entitled to a profile separate from the practice, which makes that listing advertising by the practitioner. Registration and title rules attach to the individual.
How common is non-compliance in dental advertising?
Common enough to be measured repeatedly. A 2023 British Dental Journal audit found 11% of 100 UK aligner-advertising websites fully compliant with GDC guidance, and a 2026 Journal of Orthodontics study found only 4% of claims on UK orthodontic websites were substantiated with evidence.
Should I remove categories that might be non-compliant?
Check the registration first rather than deleting on instinct. A category matching a specialty the practitioner genuinely holds is both compliant and valuable. The problem is categories chosen for search volume rather than for what the practitioner is registered to do.