What Do Patients Google Before They Book Your Practice?

Picture a woman on her couch who just decided she is finally going to deal with her knee. She does not pick up the phone. She picks up her phone. She types your name and the word reviews. She reads a few. She checks if you take her insurance. She looks for your hours and a way to book without having to call during her lunch break. Three minutes later she has either decided you are the one, or she has moved on to the next name on her list. And you never knew she was there.

This is the part of getting patients that most practice owners never see, because it happens off site, on a stranger's screen, before any contact with your office. But it is not a mystery. We know a lot about what people search before they book a doctor, and the numbers are clear. According to the 2025 rater8 report on how patients choose their doctors, 77 percent of patients use a search engine before booking an appointment and 84 percent read online reviews first. Those are not casual browsers. They are people about to spend money and trust you with their health, doing their homework.

So let us walk through the actual searches, one by one, and what each one is really asking.

Search 1: your name plus the word reviews

This is the big one. Whether someone found you through an ad, a friend, or another doctor, the very next move is to search your name and see what other people say. It is the modern version of asking around, except now the whole neighborhood answers at once and a stranger with a grudge counts the same as your happiest patient.

Here is the part that surprises a lot of owners: this happens even when a patient was referred to you. A doctor down the hall sends them your way, and they still Google you to double check. In fact rater8 found that 61 percent of patients now trust online reviews at least as much as a personal recommendation. A referral gets you onto the list. Your reviews decide if you stay on it. We wrote more about this in why referred patients still Google you before they book, because it catches so many good practices off guard.

What people are checking is not just your star rating. They are checking how many reviews you have and how recent they are. More than half of patients read at least six reviews before they decide, so a page with three reviews from 2022 looks thin and a little risky next to a competitor with two hundred from this month. And the reverse hurts too: rater8 found that 40 percent of patients have avoided or canceled a booking because of negative reviews they read. One angry post you never answered can cost you the patient before you know it.

The fix is not complicated, it is just consistent. Ask every happy patient for a review, make it a normal part of the visit, and keep a steady trickle coming in every week so your page always looks alive. If you are starting from a thin profile, our guide on how to get more Google reviews for a medical practice lays out a simple system that does not feel pushy or break any rules.

Search 2: do they take my insurance

For a huge share of patients, this is the first filter, and it is brutal. If they cannot quickly tell whether you are in their network, many just assume you are not and move on. They are not being difficult. They are being careful with money.

And money is heavy on people's minds right now. In 2025, seven in ten Americans said they were more worried about healthcare costs than the year before, and the vast majority of appointments still go to in network providers. When cost anxiety is that high, a patient will not gamble on a phone call to find out if you take their plan. They want to see it in black and white before they invest a single minute.

This is one of the easiest wins in all of medical marketing, and most practices still whiff on it. Put a plain list of the insurance plans you accept right on your website, easy to find, kept current. If you are cash pay or out of network, say that just as clearly so the right people self select in and the wrong ones do not waste your front desk's time. We made the full case for this in why your practice should list insurance on its website. It answers the question before the patient even has to ask it.

Every question a patient has to call to ask is a question that gives them a reason to hang up and try someone else. The website that answers first usually wins the appointment.

Search 3: how much does it cost

Right next to insurance sits the price question. Someone types the treatment and the words cost or price near me. This is loudest for elective and cash pay care, a med spa treatment, a dental implant, LASIK, a weight loss program, where there is no insurance code to hide behind and the patient is paying out of pocket.

Practices get nervous here. They worry that posting prices scares people off or invites competitors to undercut them. But silence does not make the question go away, it just sends the patient to whoever does answer it. You do not have to publish an exact number for everything. A starting price, a range, or an honest note that says most patients invest between X and Y depending on their plan gives people enough to feel informed and safe, and it filters out the ones who were never going to book anyway. The goal is to be the office that treats them like an adult who can handle real information.

Search 4: your hours and a way to book

Once a patient decides you are worth it, they look for the practical stuff: are you open, are you close, and can I book without a hassle. A shocking number of practices lose people right at this last step. The hours on Google are wrong. There is no booking button, just a phone number that goes to voicemail. The office is closed and the patient is looking at 9pm, which is exactly when busy people finally get a minute to deal with their health.

Think about the timing. That woman with the bad knee is not searching at 10am when your front desk is staffed. She is searching after the kids are down, when you are closed. If the only way to reach you is a call during business hours, you have handed her a reason to keep scrolling to a practice that lets her book right then. Letting patients book an appointment straight from Google and your website, day or night, catches the patient in the exact moment they are ready, instead of hoping they remember to call you tomorrow. Most of them will not.

The new search: they are asking AI too

One more shift worth knowing about. People are not only using Google's blue links anymore. In the past year, 73 percent of patients said they picked up new tools to research providers, including AI chatbots like ChatGPT, voice assistants, and social apps, according to a survey covered by Medical Economics. Someone now asks an assistant, who is a good dermatologist near me who takes my insurance, and expects a real answer.

Here is the good news: the practices that win those AI answers are the same ones that already do the basics well. AI tools pull from your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and the clear, factual pages on your website. The office with correct information, strong recent reviews, and pages that plainly answer common questions is the one that gets recommended. Doing the fundamentals right does not just win Google anymore. It wins the AI too. We go deeper on this in our writing about healthcare SEO and getting found in AI search.

Notice the pattern

Step back and look at these searches together. Are they any good. Do they take my insurance. What does it cost. Can I get in. Every one of them is a small question with a clear answer, and every one of them is a place where you either satisfy the patient or lose them. The practice that wins is almost never the one with the fanciest brand. It is the one that answers each question faster and more clearly than the office down the street.

That is a comforting thing if you run a small or independent practice, because it means you are not competing on budget. You are competing on being clear and easy. A hospital system with a giant ad budget can still lose the patient if their reviews are stale and their booking is a maze. You can beat them by simply being the practice that shows up, tells the truth, and makes it easy to say yes.

Where EtherealMinds fits

We work only with healthcare practices in the United States, and this is the exact problem we are built to solve. Most of our clients did not have a marketing problem so much as an answering problem. Patients were finding them, then leaving because the reviews were thin, the insurance was not listed, or there was no way to book after hours. Fixing that turned traffic they already had into booked patients.

So we work backward from these searches. We build websites that answer the questions patients actually type, insurance, services, prices and clear ways to book, and we make you easy to find on Google and in AI results for the searches happening in your town. We keep reviews flowing so your name looks strong when someone checks it. And when a patient lands at 9pm and wants to book, our patient acquisition system and AI receptionist answer, respond to their question, and put them on the calendar instead of sending them to voicemail. The whole point is to catch the patient during those two minutes on their phone, not after they have already picked someone else.

The honest takeaway

You cannot see the patients who search you and leave, which is exactly why it is the most overlooked leak in a practice. Nobody calls to tell you they picked the other office because your reviews looked stale or they could not tell if you took their insurance. They just go. But you can fix it, and it does not take a huge budget. Answer the four questions people are already asking, keep your reviews fresh, and make it easy to book at any hour. Do that, and you stop losing patients in the dark. You become the clear answer, and in most towns the clear answer is the one that gets booked.