The verdict
You get 750 characters and most of them are never read, because the description is collapsed behind a more button on the surface where it matters. So the order decides everything: the first sentence has to carry the service, the place and the thing that separates you, and the rest is for the small number of people who expand it. It is also not on Google’s list of things that improve local ranking, so treat it as copy rather than as a field to optimise.
Seven hundred and fifty characters is about a hundred and twenty words. Google’s guidance is short: do not exceed 750 characters, do not include URLs or HTML, and cover what you offer, what makes you special, how long you have been in business and anything else helpful, while staying away from promotions, prices and sales.
What that guidance does not tell you is that the reader sees roughly the first line and a half before it truncates.
Front-load or waste it
Most clinic descriptions open with a warm-up. “At our practice, we believe in a holistic approach to wellness, and our dedicated team is passionate about helping you achieve your health goals.”
That is 140 characters saying nothing. It is also, on a phone, the entire visible description. The service is not in it, the town is not in it, and there is no reason to expand it.
The version that works puts the concrete facts first and the philosophy last, if at all. What you do, where, for whom, and the one thing about the practice that is checkably different. Then the softer material for whoever taps more.
What I actually do with it in an audit
I rewrite it. In the report, in full, ready to paste.
Flagging a weak description as a finding is not useful. The client already suspects it is weak and does not know what a good one looks like. Two hundred words of critique produce nothing; 750 characters of finished copy get pasted in that afternoon. It is the single easiest item in the entire audit to action and it should arrive actionable.
The shape I use
- Sentence one: what and where. The service in the words patients use, and the town. This is the only sentence you can count on being read.
- Sentence two: who it is for. The specific presenting problems, not “all your wellness needs”.
- Sentence three: the checkable difference. A credential, a year the practice opened, a piece of equipment, the fact that you take a claim type others do not.
- Then the rest. Approach, philosophy, team. Fine, just not first.
- No URLs, no prices, no offers. Google names all three, and an offer will be stale in a month anyway.
The honest part
The description is not on Google’s published list of things that improve local ranking. That list names verifying the business, keeping information complete and current, responding to reviews, adding photos and videos, adding products, and getting more reviews, and the page says outright that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
So I do not sell this as a ranking lever and neither should anyone else. It is conversion copy sitting on a surface where a person is choosing between three businesses. That is worth 750 well-ordered characters on its own terms, and it does not need a ranking claim attached to justify it.
It is fourth in the order I work through a profile, after the categories and the NAP check, which is the sequence I run every time. Fourth, not first, precisely because it is copy rather than relevance.
The short version
- 750 characters, and about a line and a half is visible. Order decides everything.
- Most clinic descriptions waste the visible part on a philosophy warm-up.
- Service and town in sentence one. Presenting problems in sentence two. The checkable difference in sentence three.
- No URLs, no HTML, no prices or offers. Google names all of them.
- Rewrite it in the report. A finding produces nothing; finished copy gets pasted the same day.
- It is not a ranking factor. It is conversion copy at the moment of choosing, which is enough.
If a site should be ranking and it isn’t, that’s the work I do. SEO for chiropractors covers where the effort belongs in a practice, and local SEO covers the profile and the pages behind it together.
