Google reviews for physios: asked for at the right appointment.

Somebody with a sore back searching for a physio is choosing between three clinics they know nothing about. The number under the name and the words in the most recent review are close to the only evidence they have.

The comparison is not subtle. Two clinics on the same street, one with 180 reviews and one with 14, and the patient has no way to tell that the second one is better at shoulders. They pick the one that looks established.

The maps ranking moves too, though not in the way people assume. Review count and recency feed into which clinics show in the local results at all, so a clinic with nothing recent slowly stops appearing rather than appearing lower.

The compounding is the part worth noticing. More reviews produce more bookings, more bookings produce more reviews, and a clinic that starts asking properly pulls away from one that does not over about a year.

The right moment is the appointment where the patient first notices they are better. Not the first visit, not the discharge, the one in the middle where they say the pain has gone and they sound surprised about it.

Most businesses have to manufacture a moment to ask. A physio is handed one, out loud, by the patient, and in a course of treatment it happens at a fairly predictable point.

The reason clinics miss it is that the therapist is mid-session, the next patient is waiting, and asking feels like it interrupts the clinical relationship. So the intention survives until the end of the day and then does not.

What makes a physio clinic different from most businesses here

• You see them repeatedly.

  Six appointments is six openings. Almost no other local business gets more than one.

• Recovery is emotional.

  A person whose back has stopped hurting after months is genuinely grateful, which is the state reviews get written in.

• The therapist cannot do the asking themselves.

  Mid-treatment is the wrong moment and the wrong person. It has to happen after, from the clinic.

You can ask every patient, and you should. You cannot offer anything in exchange, you cannot ask only the happy ones, and you cannot write them yourself. Those three lines are where clinics get into trouble.

The incentive rule is the one broken most often and most innocently. A discount on the next appointment, a free consultation, an entry into a draw. All of it breaches Google's policy and all of it puts the reviews at risk of removal.

Filtering is the subtler failure. Asking only the patients who did well is called review gating, it is against the policy, and it also produces a page that reads as false to anybody who scrolls.

There is a health specific layer as well. A patient naming their condition in a review is their choice and not something a clinic should encourage or draft, and no reply from the clinic should ever confirm somebody was a patient.

A short message after the appointment, from the clinic rather than the therapist, with a direct link that opens the review box. Sent within a few hours, while the patient is still thinking about how much better they feel.

Timing beats wording by a wide margin. The same message sent three hours after an appointment and three days after produces very different results, because the feeling has faded and the link is buried.

The other thing that decides it is friction. A patient who has to search for the clinic, find the reviews tab and work out where to type will not finish. A link that opens the box directly removes almost all of the drop off.

What the message has to do

• Come from the clinic, not the therapist.

  It keeps the clinical relationship clean and it makes declining easy, which is the point.

• Go to everyone, not a selection.

  Every patient, same message, same timing. That is both the rule and the thing that makes the page believable.

• Open the review box in one tap.

  Not the clinic's profile, not the website. The box, ready to type in.