AHPRA & Google Reviews: What Allied Health Practitioners Need to Know

If you run an allied health practice, there's a good chance someone has told you that AHPRA doesn't allow you to have Google reviews. It's one of the most persistent myths in health marketing, and it costs practices real ground — because the practice down the road that understood the rules properly is collecting reviews while you're sitting them out.

So let's clear it up. Patients can leave you Google reviews. You can have a Google Business Profile. You can reply to what people write. What the rules restrict is much narrower than most practitioners think, and once you can see where the line actually sits, it's not difficult to stay on the right side of it.

What the law actually says

The rule everyone is talking about is section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law. It prohibits the use of testimonials in advertising a regulated health service.

Two words in that sentence do all the work.

"Testimonial" has a specific meaning here. AHPRA defines it as a recommendation or positive statement about the clinical aspects of a service — the symptom or reason someone came in, the diagnosis or treatment, the outcome, or the practitioner's skills or experience. A comment about how someone was treated at reception, how clearly things were explained, or how the appointment ran is not a clinical statement, and generally isn't a testimonial for the purposes of the National Law.

"Advertising" means material you publish or control to promote your service. Your website. Your social accounts. Your paid ads. Your brochures.

Notice what isn't in there: patients writing about you, in their own words, on somebody else's platform.

Why Google reviews sit outside it

A review a patient posts on Google is published by the patient, on a platform you don't own or control. AHPRA's own guidance is clear that advertisers aren't responsible for removing — or chasing the removal of — testimonials published on platforms they don't control. You don't need to police your Google profile, and you don't need to ask anyone to take a review down.

This is the part practitioners most often get wrong, and it's the expensive kind of wrong. Practices go quiet on reviews entirely, out of an abundance of caution, while patients choosing a physio or a podiatrist do exactly what everyone else does: search, scan the ratings, and pick from the top few. Reviews are doing commercial work for your practice whether you participate or not.

Where the line is: reproduction

Here's the boundary that matters. A patient review on Google is generally outside s133. The moment you lift that review into advertising you control — embed it on your homepage, screenshot it for an Instagram post, drop it into an ad — it becomes content you are publishing. If it refers to clinical aspects of care, it can become a prohibited testimonial.

Same words. Different publisher. Different rules.

In practice that gives you a straightforward test before anything goes onto your own channels. AHPRA says a comment is about a clinical aspect if it expresses any one of three things: a symptom or the reason someone came in; a diagnosis or treatment; or an outcome — which includes the practitioner's skills or experience, whether stated outright or by comparison with someone else.

That last one catches more than people expect. "Fixed my shoulder" is obviously clinical. So are "the best physio in Brisbane" and "much better than the last place I tried" — no condition named, no treatment, no result, but they're statements about skill and comparison, and they're testimonials.

What's left over is genuinely non-clinical: communication, punctuality, the front desk, the parking, how easy booking was. Those may be used.

Displaying your overall Google star rating as a factual statement, with a link to your profile, is widely treated as acceptable — it's a fact about your listing rather than a reproduced comment. AHPRA's guidelines don't address star ratings directly, so if you're leaning on this heavily, check your position.

Replying to reviews

You can respond to reviews, and responding is good practice — Google encourages it, and it shows every future reader that you're paying attention.

One thing to know before you start. AHPRA's guidance asks advertisers to take care when engaging with reviews on third-party sites, because a reply can be read as making use of that review to advertise your service. That isn't a prohibition on replying, and we're not aware of an Australian practitioner being sanctioned for it — but it does mean the reply itself is your publication and carries your obligations, which is why its content matters as much as it does.

Two things to keep out of it: therapeutic or outcome language of any kind, and anything that confirms a clinical relationship or a clinical detail. Thanking someone for feedback about the practice is fine. Discussing their care, even to correct something, is not — and it raises privacy questions on top of the advertising ones.

The safe shape of a reply is short, warm, non-clinical, and offline-directed: acknowledge the feedback, thank them, and invite anything specific to come to the practice directly.

Asking patients for reviews

Nothing in AHPRA's rules stops you inviting patients to leave an honest review. Two other rulebooks apply to how you ask, and both are simpler than they sound:

• Google's platform policies govern the ask itself — no screening patients by how happy they seem, no incentives. We've set out what Google's policies actually allow in plain English.
• If you're asking by text message in Australia, the Spam Act adds consent, identification and opt-out requirements. That's covered in where you stand legally when texting customers.

There's a reason to be strict about the "same way" part beyond Google's rules: AHPRA's own guidance treats reviews that have been selectively published or edited as one of the more serious advertising problems. Asking everyone identically, and leaving what they write alone, is the position that answers both regulators at once.

Ask every patient the same way, keep it neutral, and let the feedback fall where it falls.

Where the responsibility sits

This article is general information, not legal or compliance advice. AHPRA's guidelines are the authority, they change from time to time, and your obligations may differ depending on your profession, your board and what you're advertising. Verify your position with AHPRA, your professional association or your insurer before you publish anything you're unsure about. If you're in cosmetic or higher-risk non-surgical procedures, a separate set of advertising guidelines applies on top of the general ones.

No tool takes that responsibility off you. What a tool can do is make the compliant path the default one, so the careful version doesn't depend on remembering the rules at 6pm on a Friday.

That's how we've built the allied health side of Gold Reviews. Review responses for registered practitioners are drafted with AHPRA-aware guardrails — the drafting is designed to stay away from clinical language, conditions, treatments and outcomes — and testimonial features are restricted for practices flagged as AHPRA-regulated. Every reply is yours to read and approve before it goes anywhere, and edits you make are your call. It's assistance with the guardrails, not a guarantee about your compliance, and it's built to run quietly in the background rather than adding another thing to your week.

Allied health practices don't need to sit out Google reviews. They need to know where the line is — and then get on with collecting the reviews that patients are already using to choose a practitioner. If you'd like that handled without the second-guessing, have a look at what Gold Reviews costs.

This article is general information about AHPRA's advertising rules, not legal or compliance advice. Guidelines change — for the current position, see AHPRA's advertising guidelines and the AHPRA testimonial tool, and verify your own obligations with AHPRA, your professional association or your insurer.