To get your care home found on Google and AI, complete your Google Business Profile, make your website answer families’ questions, and claim your carehome.co.uk listing. Then build reviews and set up Bing.
AI assistants read the same web. Nobody can promise you a place in their answers.
Why does being found matter when you have empty rooms?
Picture a daughter in a hospital car park. Her dad is being discharged and she needs a room by Friday. She has twenty minutes and a phone.
She searches “dementia care home in” and the name of your town. A map appears with three homes on it. She reads a few reviews, opens two websites and calls the home that looks most certain.
If your home is missing, or your listing shows a number nobody answers, she calls someone else. The quality of your care never gets the chance to count.
A 2026 study by Care England and Log my Care found families most often used directories (55%), online search (40%) and word of mouth (38%). This guide deals with the first two.
The bar is lower than you might expect. In our November 2026 analysis of 9,807 homes in England, 5,932 of those on Google had fewer than ten Google reviews.
Empty rooms cost real money. Say a room earns £1,200 a week. Eight empty weeks is then £9,600. The occupancy calculator will do that sum for your own home.
What should you do first?
Set aside an afternoon and work down this list in order. Google’s verification may take longer, but everything else can be started today.
- See what families see. On your phone, search your home’s name, then “care home in” and your town. Write down anything wrong or missing.
- Write one master sheet. Put your exact name, address, telephone number, website, care types and visiting arrangements on it. Every listing gets copied from this sheet.
- Claim your Google Business Profile and correct it against the sheet.
- Claim your carehome.co.uk listing and do the same.
- Get your Google review link and start asking every family.
- Connect your website to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Both are free.
- Ask ChatGPT and Copilot about your home. Save the answers, so you can compare them in three months.
How do you set up a Google Business Profile for a care home?
This is the free listing that appears on Google Maps and beside search results. It is often the first thing a family sees, so it comes first here too.
Google says local results depend on relevance, distance and how well known a business is. You cannot pay for a better local ranking, and you can’t move your building, so work on the other two.
Start by checking who owns the profile. If a former administrator or an old web company set it up, ask them to transfer it, or request access through Google.
Use a shared office email address, and add the Home Manager and deputy as managers.
Then go through these details against your master sheet.
- Name. Use your home’s real name. Google’s rules do not allow added words such as “Best Dementia Care in Bristol”.
- Category. Google asks for as few categories as possible, and specific ones. Type “care” and “nursing” into the box and pick what truly describes you.
- Telephone. Give the number a person answers. Work out who picks up after the receptionist goes home, because evening calls are often the urgent ones.
- Hours. Set them to when someone can really talk to a family, and update them for bank holidays.
- Description. Say what you do and where, in plain words. For example, “Residential and dementia care for 38 people in Thame, with a walled garden.”
- Photographs. Add real, recent ones with written consent from anyone shown. Ask your activities coordinator to add one a month. If yours look tired, see our page on care home photography.
What does your website need so Google understands it?
Your current website may be good enough. Check that the top of your homepage names your town and the care you give, and that your address and a tap-to-call number appear on every page.
Give each type of care its own page. A son searching for respite care should land on a page about respite, saying how long a stay can be and how to book.
Avoid copying one page twenty times with a different town name on each. Google’s spam policies call this doorway abuse. One honest page about the home, and the villages you draw families from, serves you better.
Then answer the questions your receptionist hears every week. Keep a list for a fortnight. “Can Dad bring his dog?” and “What happens if Mum’s money runs out?” both deserve a plain answer on your site.
Put the answer in the first sentence under a heading that asks the question. Families can skim it, and machines can lift it. Our guide to answering the questions families really ask shows how.
Connect your site to Google Search Console and submit your sitemap. It shows which searches find you and which pages Google has left out. One strong page usually beats several weak ones.
Schema is a hidden label that gives search engines your name, address and opening hours. It is worth having, and it is no magic trick. Our guide to schema markup covers what still counts in 2026.
For the rest of the site, read what a care home website needs to win families’ trust.
How do you get your carehome.co.uk listing and other directories right?
Directories were the most common source in the Care England study, and carehome.co.uk is the one most homes should tackle first. Every home can have a free basic profile.
To take control of it, create an account with your care home email address, then ask their support team to link it to your home. Add your description and photographs, then check the contact details.
Send yourself a test enquiry through the listing. Make sure it reaches someone who reads that inbox every day, and not a manager who left two years ago.
carehome.co.uk also sells paid upgrades. Before you pay, ask every caller how they found you for a few months, then compare the enquiries with the cost. Our marketing budget calculator can help.
Next, search for your town and note the other directories that appear, such as your council’s care directory. Check your CQC profile too. Your administrator can work through them with the master sheet.
Look hardest for old details. After a change of owner or name, the previous version can sit on listings for years. A wrong number loses you the call.
How do reviews help you get found?
Reviews do two jobs. Families read them, and Google says more reviews and better ratings “can help your business’s local ranking”.
Ask every family, at a natural moment such as the first care plan review. Give them a link or a QR code, then leave it with them.
Keep inside Google’s rules. You may not ask only the happy families, offer anything in return, press anyone while they are in the home, ask for particular wording, or let staff review you.
carehome.co.uk takes reviews from residents, their families and friends. Tell families both options exist and let them choose.
Reply to every review, including the hard ones, without confirming that anyone lives with you.
Our guide to earning and answering care home reviews has the wording, and care home reputation management covers the difficult cases.
Why should a care home bother with Bing?
Microsoft’s Copilot, built into Windows and Edge, sends its web searches to Bing. If a family asks Copilot about care in your town, Bing’s picture of your home is what it works from.
ChatGPT is less clear cut. OpenAI says its search uses third-party search providers, and its help pages name Bing for business accounts.
It also runs its own crawler, and it doesn’t say how much each counts. Treat Bing as one likely source.
The set-up is free and takes about an hour.
Check Apple too. Apple Business, free since April 2026, controls your place card in Apple Maps. Apple says it reaches Siri as well.
What can you do about ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers?
Start with the honest position. Nobody can promise you a place in an AI answer, and you should walk away from anyone who does. The answers shift with the question, the person asking and the day.
We have not seen a reliable figure for how many families use AI to choose a care home. Treat AI as one more place where your facts need to be right.
Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are both in use in the UK. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear, with no special file or schema. The work above is what counts.
OpenAI says sites that block its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.
It also says adverts do not influence the answers. Adverts are a separate job, covered in how to advertise a care home.
These five things are in your hands.
- Check you are not blocking anyone. Ask your web company to confirm your site allows OAI-SearchBot, Bingbot and Googlebot.
- Be clear on every page. Say which care you offer and which you don’t, so nobody has to guess.
- Be written about by others. A story in your local paper is a mention you didn’t write yourself. See how to get your care home in the local paper.
- Check once a month. Ask ChatGPT, Copilot and Google the same five questions. If one says you offer nursing and you don’t, find the listing that says so and correct it there.
- Count it. Add “AI assistant” to the options when your receptionist asks how someone found you. Visits from ChatGPT carry a chatgpt.com tag in your website statistics.
In November 2026 we asked eight AI tools about dementia care in Exeter. Five homes took over half the mentions, and large groups came up often.
Independent homes with strong evidence were named too. Treat it as an early pattern, and see our study of 9,807 homes.
For a closer look at AI alone, read AI search for care homes.
How long does it take, and how will you know it is working?
Google gives no timetable. Corrections to your listings usually show within days or weeks, and better positions take months. If you need enquiries this month, adverts can work while you wait.
About half an hour a month keeps it going, once the work is shared out.
- Your receptionist asks every caller how they found you and writes it down.
- Your deputy replies to new reviews.
- Your administrator checks listings against the master sheet and runs the five AI questions.
- Your Home Manager reads the totals.
Measure enquiries by source, along with the calls shown in your Google Business Profile. A spreadsheet is fine to begin with. Our page on the care home CRM shows a fuller enquiries list.
A high position that brings no calls is worth little. Our guide to handling care home enquiries covers what happens once more families start to call.
When is it worth getting help?
You can do most of this yourself, and we’d rather teach you than bill you. Help earns its keep when nobody has the time, or when you run several homes.
Our care home SEO page sets out what we do each month and what it costs, so you can compare it with doing the work in-house.
Every guide on this topic
Being found by AI
Your website and what families see
Using AI in your own marketing
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