Buying a dental practice: what to do with the website, the Google Business Profile and the name

Take a fictional practice, Cabinet dentaire du Mail, in Tours. Dr. Morin is retiring and Dr. Garnier is taking over. The sale agreement covers the patient base, the equipment, the lease and the staff, but not the website, the Google Business Profile or the domain name. After the handover, Dr. Garnier discovers that the profile is tied to Dr. Morin's personal email account, that the domain name belongs to the former agency and that the team page still shows her predecessor.

Guides on buying a dental practice talk about legal structure, taxes and the patient base. This article covers what they leave out: the practice's presence online.

After a takeover, patients still search for the old name

A loyal patient does not type "dentist Tours". They type their dentist's name. 59.8% of French people look for health information online (Eurostat, 2025), often simply to find a phone number. If that name no longer leads anywhere, the patient concludes the practice has closed and looks for another one. None of them tell you they have left.

Three accidents often happen around the former dentist's name:

• the practice's Google Business Profile is closed by mistake, or shows a name that no longer exists;
• the dentist's Doctolib page (Doctolib is France's leading online booking platform), which often outranks the practice website on the dentist's name, disappears with them;
• the website goes down, because the seller was paying for the hosting and the direct debit has stopped.

The guide Doctolib outranks my website explains why that page carries so much weight on a dentist's name.

Before signing: the list of what the practice owns online

The first step happens before signing: find out who holds each item, then write it into the agreement or an appendix. Here is the table to fill in with the seller.

The most common trap is the real holder: an agency, or the seller's personal account. Better to find out before signing, while the seller still has every reason to cooperate.

The Google Business Profile: transfer it, never create a new one

The practice's Google Business Profile carries an address, a history and reviews. All of that can be kept, on one condition: transfer the profile, do not recreate it.

The primary owner of the profile can transfer primary ownership to someone else from the "People and access" section. Google states that this transfer keeps the business information, reviews included. Only the primary owner can do it, so it is up to the seller. Google also imposes a waiting period before the new owner can manage every feature. Make the transfer a few days before the takeover, not on the day itself.

The frequent mistake goes the other way: without access, the buyer creates a second profile. Two profiles for the same practice break Google's rules and compete for the same spot. The map relies on three official criteria, relevance, distance and prominence (Google help), and a brand-new profile starts over without the old one's history. The article dentist plus city on Google Maps details these criteria.

Once the profile is recovered, update the name if it changes, the phone number, the hours and the team photos. If the former dentist had a profile under their own name, decide with them what happens to it before signing: that profile follows the person, as explained in the article on the Google Business Profile of a multi-dentist practice. The Google Business Profile for dentists page goes through every field.

The domain name and the website: keep the URLs

The domain name is the website's address, for example cabinet-du-mail.fr. Keeping it saves you from starting from scratch. The domain name is transferred through a change of registrant with the registrar, with the agreement of whoever holds it.

For the website, two rules matter:

1. Pages keep their URLs. If the website is rebuilt, every old URL points to the new page covering the same topic, through a redirect. Google recommends permanent redirects from each old URL to the new one, kept in place as long as possible.
2. The content changes on day one. The seller's background and photo no longer belong there. A team page that presents a dentist who has left is no longer fair and honest communication, within the meaning of article R.4127-215-1 of the French Public Health Code.

Look at the rest too. A website that comes with a practice often has a single page for every treatment, or no fees at all. The article on the seven mistakes on dental practice websites gives a one-minute test for each one, and the dental practice website page describes the structure to aim for.

The practice name and the former dentist's name

Should you keep the practice name? If it does not carry a person's name, that is the simplest option. "Cabinet dentaire du Mail" goes through a takeover without changing anything. "Dr. Morin's Practice" becomes a problem as soon as Dr. Morin no longer works there: patients expect to find him when they walk in. If the name changes, the new one is written identically everywhere, on the same day: the sign, the Google Business Profile, the website, Doctolib, the directories. A name that differs from one place to another confuses Google as much as patients. The same goes for the practice's accounts, and the Facebook page of a dental practice is often the oldest and most forgotten of them.

That leaves the seller's name, which patients still type. A plain page on the website can say that the practice has been taken over, on what date, and who now practices there, with the same contact details. It answers the patient who types the old name, without promoting or comparing anything. Have the wording reviewed by your local branch of the French Dental Council (Ordre national des chirurgiens-dentistes). The guide what the Dental Council allows on a dentist website recalls the rules.

The steps, in order

Each step depends on the previous one.

1. Before signing. Fill in the table with the seller, and write into the agreement the transfer of the Google Business Profile, the domain name and the website logins.
2. A few days before the takeover. The seller transfers primary ownership of the profile and starts the change of registrant for the domain name.
3. On takeover day. Update the profile: name if needed, phone number, hours, photos. Change the team page and publish the page about the takeover.
4. The first week. Write the same name, the same address and the same phone number on Doctolib and in the directories. Ask Doctolib what happens to the former dentist's profile.
5. The first month. Search for the old name and the new one on Google, from a phone, in a private browsing window. Correct every source that still says something else.
6. Then, every month. Repeat the same check, and ask the AI tools the same question.

AI search and the old name

56.6% of French people already use artificial intelligence, including to find a dentist (Arcom and Médiamétrie, April 2026). And since July 22, 2026, Google has shown its AI Overviews and AI Mode in France. These answers draw on the website, the profile and the directories: if they still name the former dentist, the AI may keep citing him.

Two steps reduce that lag: identical information everywhere, and text that can be read without scripts, because the crawlers of OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity do not read JavaScript. The AI search for dentists page explains how these crawlers read a practice. To check the answers, follow the method in the article is your dental practice on ChatGPT, with the old name and then the new one, and count in percentage of answers, never in position.

A well-prepared takeover keeps the profile, the website address and the link with the old name. The SEO test gives you a first snapshot of the practice you have taken over. And if the takeover comes with moving the dental practice, the same rules apply, with one more address to change everywhere.

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