How to Ask Patients for Google Reviews, by Market

How to ask patients for Google reviews is governed less by the asking than by what you do next. No regulator we read in the five markets forbids the request outright. Google's own policy sets the floor, and it is a workable one: ask everyone in the same neutral words, offer nothing in exchange, and do not stand over a patient while they type. The rules that actually bite are the ones about using a review afterwards, and in Australia and New Zealand those rules reach as far as replying to one.

This guide is for clinic owners, physical therapists (PTs) and physiotherapists in the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The regulator, platform and statutory documents named here were read on October 24, 2026, each at the source rather than through a summary. It is education, not legal advice, and advertising rules change faster than most clinical ones, so read your own regulator's current standard before you turn any of this into a process. The broader picture, including what you may put in an advertisement, sits in the marketing guide; this page is the operational one for reviews.

Can you ask a patient for a review at all?

Yes in all five, with conditions, and the conditions differ enough that one process will not serve a clinic with sites in two countries. Permission to ask is the easy part. What counts as using the review afterwards is where the five markets diverge.

Market by market:

USA: asking is allowed. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule bans fake and sentiment-conditioned reviews, and its endorsement guidance warns against asking only the patients you expect to be pleased.
UK: asking is allowed and the law says so explicitly, including asking with an incentive, as long as you disclose the incentive. Google forbids the incentive anyway.
Canada: provincial, and no province we read prohibits the request. Alberta's College permits patient testimonials but tells registrants to be careful not to elicit reviews and never to coerce one. British Columbia's regulator sets out why soliciting is a problem without banning it. Ontario's standard does not mention reviews, and Manitoba's does not either.
Australia: nothing in the National Law or the national advertising guidelines addresses asking, and the testimonial prohibition bites on use, including, by Ahpra's own wording, on replying.
New Zealand: asking is not prohibited, but a testimonial that claims a therapeutic benefit cannot be used in a health service advertisement at all, which is stricter than most clinics expect.

So the question to settle before you switch anything on is not "may I ask". It is "what may I do with what comes back", and that answer is local.

What Google's own policy allows and forbids

Google's Maps user generated content policy is the floor under all five markets, because it applies to the platform wherever you practice. It allows a merchant to encourage the posting of content "that does represent a genuine experience", and in the same sentence attaches two conditions: no incentive offered for doing it, and no attempt to influence either the rating or what the review says. The permission and the conditions arrive together, and the conditions are what review-chasing software is usually sold to get around:

No incentives, including payment, discounts, free goods or free services, in exchange for a review, for changing one, or for taking one down.
No discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews, and no selectively soliciting positive reviews.
No requiring or pressuring a person to review while on the premises.
No asking staff to collect a target number of reviews, and no asking them to solicit reviews containing particular content, which Google spells out as including content that identifies a staff member.
Content based on a conflict of interest is not allowed, and Google says that may include current or former employment, a contractual relationship, or a family one. Your receptionist's five-star review counts, and so does your brother's.

Point 3 is where the usual commercial advice goes wrong. The policy bars requiring or pressuring somebody to review while they are on the premises, which is a fair description of the clipboard at the front desk and the tablet held out at reception. Hand over the request to take away instead, as a link by SMS or email, and let them do it or not do it at home. Point 4 also quietly kills the two most common scripts in the sector: a monthly review target for the front desk, and "mention your physio by name if you can".

The United States

The FTC's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect on October 21, 2024. On incentives, the FTC's own questions and answers page says the rule "does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews", provided there is no express or implied requirement that a review express a particular sentiment, and it adds that failing to disclose an incentive could itself breach the FTC Act. Google bans the incentive regardless, so the workable answer for a clinic is to offer nothing.

The FTC's endorsement guidance covers the other half of it. Asking only the patients you think will be happy "would be misleading if it substantially skews the favorability of the reviews." The worked example there is worth knowing, because it is the clinic version almost exactly: a company wanting to send its review link only to the regions where satisfaction is highest is told no. Swap regions for clinicians, or for the patients whose outcomes went well, and you have the process most practices drift into. One request to every discharged patient is both easier to run and easier to defend than one that depends on a guess about who liked you.

Read the rule itself. It is free at the eCFR, and two of its sections do work that the summaries skip. Section 465.5 deals with reviews by insiders, which covers your staff, your managers and their immediate families, and it turns on whether the relationship was disclosed. It also carves out "generalized solicitations to purchasers" asking them to post about their own experience, which is a direct endorsement of the one-message-to-everyone approach. Section 465.7 names the suppression tactics: a groundless legal threat, a physical threat, intimidation, or a knowingly false public accusation aimed at stopping a review or getting one taken down.

Then there is privacy, which is where US clinics actually get into trouble. If you are a HIPAA covered entity, 45 CFR 164.508 means you may not disclose protected health information without a valid authorization unless the rule otherwise permits it. The Office for Civil Rights settled with a dental practice in October 2019 over patient information disclosed in replies to online reviews. Replying to a review is publishing, and confirming that the reviewer is your patient is a disclosure.

Your state practice act and state board may add advertising requirements of their own, and no state's rules are described here, so read your own board's. The APTA Code of Ethics that took effect on January 1, 2026 replaced the earlier code, so if your policy quotes the old one it needs updating.

The United Kingdom

The UK has the clearest statutory position of the five, and it is more permissive than most clinics assume and stricter in places they do not expect. Paragraph 13 of Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 banned fake reviews and concealed incentivized reviews, and came into force on April 6, 2025. The Competition and Markets Authority published its guidance, CMA208, on April 4, 2025.

What that regime means at the front desk:

Asking is permitted, and the guidance says so in terms. Encouraging reviews is fine if you do it "without predetermining the contents or sentiment expressed in the review", and merely emailing customers to ask whether they would like to leave one is outside the ban.
An incentivized review is lawful if you tell consumers it was incentivized and the review still reflects the reviewer's genuine experience. The clash to notice: that is legal in the UK and against Google's platform policy, so a disclosed discount for a review is still off the table on Google.
Suppression is an infringement. The guidance lists threats of harm or legal action, preventing genuine users from reviewing, "arbitrarily stopping and starting review invitations", and making an offer of dispute resolution conditional on no negative review. Cherry picking is caught twice over, both by hiding the negative reviews you have and by encouraging only the satisfied patients to write in the first place.
If you display your own ratings on your own website, you are publishing those reviews, and paragraph 13(3) of the Schedule requires reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove banned content. The guidance states that this duty "is non-delegable", so paying an agency to watch it does not move the obligation off you. It also expects a risk assessment, reviewed and updated rather than done once.
The one most clinics would never guess. If you publish reviews yourself, you must not try to talk a patient into making a complaint instead of leaving a review, must not discourage a review once you have resolved their problem, and must not treat a negative review meant for publication as a complaint and quietly not publish it. The instinct to move an unhappy patient into the complaints process is the right instinct clinically and an infringement if it is used to keep the review off your own page.

Advertising rules sit on top. CAP Code rules 3.44 to 3.50 govern a review once you use it in marketing: no fake reviews, incentives made clear, no publishing them in a misleading way, and permission before you use one. Rule 3.47 is the administrative one that catches people out. You must hold documentary evidence that a testimonial is genuine and keep contact details for the patient who gave it, which means a quote lifted off a platform three years ago, from a patient you can no longer identify, is not usable.

Canada, province by province

Canada has a college per province and this page describes four of them. Do not read a rule below as a Canadian rule, and do not assume your own college matches a neighbour's.

Alberta is the most explicit, and it cuts both ways. The College's guidance on unprofessional advertising answers "can I use patient testimonials?" with a flat yes, subject to the Standards of Practice and the Code of Ethical Conduct, and it prints a worked pair of examples: a patient saying the physio was friendly and listened is fine, and one calling him the best in the city, recommending a named modality and comparing him with a competitor is not. On the asking, the same guidance says you "need to be careful not to elicit reviews from patients" and that physiotherapists "at no time should be coercing patients to leave positive online reviews". It also rules out inducements of any kind, which closes off a prize draw for reviewers.

British Columbia's regulator does not ban the request either, but it is the only one of the four that explains why it dislikes it, and the reasoning is clinical rather than commercial. Soliciting testimonials or web reviews "can be problematic", because a patient asked by their own clinician may feel some obligation to oblige, or to be kinder than their actual experience, or may worry that declining will affect their care. It then asks the question worth sitting with: would a glowing review leave you feeling indebted to that patient, and would it change how objectively you treat them. That is a better argument against the front desk ask than any rule.

Ontario's Advertising and Marketing Standard, effective May 1, 2025, does not mention testimonials or reviews. What it does rule out reaches them anyway: claims of superiority "about any aspect of care", comparative statements about care providers, unsubstantiated claims, unrealistic expectations and guarantees of successful outcomes. It also requires you to review advertising placed on your behalf, correct it if it falls short and document what you did, so a review you quote on your own site is yours to stand behind.

Manitoba's practice direction, current as of June 12, 2025, likewise says nothing about soliciting reviews, and we checked the document itself rather than a summary of it. What it does carry matters more for a clinic than a review rule would. The physiotherapist is accountable for what appears on a clinic website or any other online platform used for advertising.

Incentives and inducements are out in a long and specific list that includes gift cards, time-limited pricing, package deals and fee bundling, and prize draws, and it treats collecting personal information through a draw as not permitted. Free physiotherapy services may not be advertised at all, including free consultations, screening appointments, assessments and trials, outside four stated purposes. And before you use a patient's picture, video or image in advertising you need their explicit informed consent, which is the expectation a clinic is most likely to trip over when it starts reposting reviews with photographs attached.

Alberta and Manitoba both restrict the word specialist unless the College has authorized the designation, so a review that calls you the city's best specialist is one to leave where it sits.

Australia, where the usual advice is the wrong advice

In Australia the risk is not the asking. It is the reply.

Section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law prohibits advertising a regulated health service in a way that "uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business". Purported matters: a statement that merely looks like a testimonial is caught alongside a real one. The maximum penalty under the section is 60,000 dollars for an individual and 120,000 dollars for a body corporate, as the section stood when we read it, amended in 2022. Figures in penalty provisions get revised, so check them at the source and do not quote this page.

Ahpra's Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, in force since December 14, 2020, fill in what the statute leaves open, and section 133 itself says a court may have regard to a guideline approved by a National Board. They are not merely advice and they are not the law either, which is a useful thing to understand before you decide how closely to follow them.

The guidelines say the National Law does not define testimonial, so Ahpra uses its ordinary meaning: a recommendation or positive statement about the clinical aspects of the service, used in advertising. A comment is clinical if it mentions any one of three things, and this is the test to apply to every review you are tempted to use:

The symptom, or the reason the patient came to you.
The diagnosis, or the treatment you gave.
The outcome, or your skills and experience, either directly or by comparison with someone else.

Comments about customer service or communication style, with no clinical reference, are not testimonials, and Ahpra says those may be used in advertising. "Reception were lovely and the place was spotless" is usable. "My sciatica went after three sessions" is not, however genuine it is.

What else the guidelines settle, read as they are written:

The prohibition does not stop patients posting reviews. Ahpra says advertisers are not responsible for removing testimonials on platforms they do not control, or on sites that are not advertising a regulated health service.
Whoever controls the advertising is responsible. On your own website or your own business social media page, that is you, even where the platform gives you no way to edit or delete, and Ahpra names disabling the reviews function as a way of meeting the obligation.
The sentence that changes how an Australian clinic works: a provider "should take care if they choose to engage with reviews on a third-party site", because it may be treated as using a testimonial to advertise. A warm thank-you under a patient's glowing clinical review is the risk, not the review.

So in Australia, think hard before you reply at all, and if you do, keep away from anything clinical. Ahpra's testimonial tool walks through the same questions in order.

There is a real gap here, and it stays a gap. Neither section 133 nor Ahpra's guidelines nor the testimonial tool says anything about whether you may ask for a review. The statute prohibits using a testimonial in advertising; it does not stop a patient writing one, and it does not speak to solicitation at all. This page will not tell you Ahpra permits asking or forbids it, because Ahpra has not said. Keep those three questions separate in your own policy too.

On inducements, section 133 also requires an advertisement offering a gift, discount or other inducement to state the terms and conditions of the offer.

New Zealand

New Zealand is the market most often described as the relaxed one, and on reviews it is not. Read the rule and then read the qualifier at the front of it.

The Advertising Standards Authority's Therapeutic and Health Advertising Code covers health services, and the ASA's guidance note on advertising health services names physiotherapy among them. Rule 2(f) says patient testimonials and healthcare professional endorsements in advertisements, "where not prohibited by law", must comply with the Code and be "authenticated, genuine, current, and typical" and acknowledge any valuable consideration, and that exceptional cases must be presented as such. Most summaries stop there. The qualifier is doing the work.

Because the guidance note then says that health service advertisements must not include endorsements or testimonials making therapeutic purpose claims, citing the Medicines Act 1981. What it permits instead is narrow and specific: commentary about the experience of the service that does not relate to a therapeutic treatment outcome and does not reference the patient's own condition or circumstances. The ASA's own examples of what is acceptable are the words professional, kind, efficient, relaxing, calming, soothing, and a clean, tidy, friendly environment. That is close to the Australian position arrived at by a different route, and a New Zealand clinic running a review widget full of recovery stories on its own website should treat that as a problem rather than an asset.

The ASA defines advertising by control, as any message whose content the advertiser controls directly or indirectly, with the intent to influence choice or behaviour, and it lists social media content and websites as examples. So the test for your own pages is the same one Ahpra applies: if you control it, it is advertising.

Rule 2(a) is also weaker than it is usually quoted. Advertisements "shall be accurate", claims must be able to be substantiated, and substantiation "should exist prior to a claim being made". Should, not must. The duty to be accurate is the hard one.

What this page cannot settle for you is where any particular claim falls, because that turns on the Medicines Act rather than on the Code, and on the facts of your wording. If you want to use patient words in New Zealand advertising, the ASA runs a paid pre-vetting service for exactly this, and that is a better answer than a judgement call. The Physiotherapy Board's code of ethics sits on top and requires physiotherapists to provide truthful, accurate and relevant information and not knowingly to make misleading representations. It also requires specific consent before a clinical photograph is reused for advertising or promotion.

How do you reply without confirming someone is a patient?

Say nothing that only a treating clinician would know, and nothing that confirms the person was ever in your clinic. That is the whole discipline. It feels cold the first few times.

What works:

Thank the reviewer for the feedback without naming or acknowledging a treatment relationship.
Say what the clinic does generally, not what happened to them.
Give one route to a private conversation: a phone number or an email address for the practice manager.
Stop there. Do not correct their account of their care in public, even when they described it first and even when they are wrong.

A reply that works in all five markets reads close to this: "Thank you for taking the time to leave feedback. We take every comment about our service seriously, and we would like to understand what happened. Please contact our practice manager on [number] so we can look into it." Nothing in that confirms anyone is a patient.

Then the local overlays. In the USA, that same restraint is what the HIPAA authorization rule and the 2019 enforcement action are about. In Australia, replying at all may be treated as using a testimonial, so the shortest safe reply is often none. In the UK, if the review sits on a page you publish yourself, keep the private route genuinely optional: inviting a patient to ring the practice manager is fine, steering them into the complaints process so the review never appears is not.

Asking in a way that is fair, and the wording to use

Pick one group and ask all of it, in one set of words, through one route. At discharge is the natural point, because the episode of care is finished and nothing you say can look like it is attached to further treatment.

A request that meets the platform policy and the market rules: "If you have a few minutes, we would welcome a review of your experience here. Good or bad, it helps us and it helps the next patient. Here is the link." Send it as a link by SMS or email, or through the patient app you already use, after the visit rather than during it.

What that wording deliberately does not do: it does not ask for five stars, it does not ask them to mention a clinician by name, it does not offer anything, and it does not exclude the patient whose outcome disappointed them. Write it once, keep it in your cancellation and admin policies folder with your other standard messages, and let reception send it unchanged.

Keep a record of who was asked and when. If a regulator or a trading standards officer ever asks whether you invited only your happy patients, a dated list of every discharged patient who got the same message is the answer, and a memory is not.

What do you do about a false or unfair review?

Start by accepting what cannot be done. Nobody can get a review removed for being negative, and a review that is simply a bad opinion of your clinic is going to stay up. Google removes content that breaches its own policies, which is a narrower thing: fake engagement and rating manipulation, conflict of interest, off-topic content, harassment, and personal information, which its policy defines as including medical information about the person or anyone else. Report it through the profile, name the specific policy it breaks, and expect the process to be slow and the outcome uncertain.

Where a review contains a factual claim about care that you believe is false, two instincts both need resisting. Do not argue it in public, for the confidentiality reasons above. And do not threaten the reviewer, because in the UK that is in the suppression territory the CMA guidance describes, and in the USA groundless legal threats to suppress a review are named in the FTC rule.

What to do instead, in order: read it as data about your service, reply briefly and privately as above, fix the thing if it is real, and keep inviting every discharged patient so one bad review sits in a wide, honest sample. A clinic with 80 genuine reviews absorbs a bad one. A clinic with four does not, which is an argument for asking everyone, every time.

In the UK, you must not make resolving a complaint conditional on the review coming down, and you must not quietly stop asking for reviews when the last few went badly. If you publish reviews on your own site, the FTC rule and the CMA guidance agree on what you may legitimately withhold, and the test is that the criteria apply equally whatever the sentiment: another person's personal information, abusive or defamatory content, something clearly false, or a review you reasonably believe is fake. In Australia, you may turn the review function off on a page you control, and Ahpra names that as a way of meeting the obligation.

A process the front desk can follow

Write it down once, on one page, and keep it where reception can see it.

Who gets asked: every patient discharged from a plan of care, no exceptions and no screening.
When: after the final visit, not during it.
How: the standard message, sent as a link by SMS or email, or through the patient app, unchanged by whoever sends it.
Who never asks: nobody asks in person at the desk, and no member of staff reviews the clinic.
Who replies, and from which template, with a single named person responsible.
What never appears in a reply: whether the person is a patient, anything clinical, anything about their outcome.
What you may and may not put on your own website, which is the separate question. In Australia and New Zealand a review mentioning a condition, a treatment or an outcome does not go on a page you control, however good it is.
Who reviews the process, and when. Once a year is enough in a stable year, and immediately when a regulator or platform changes a rule.

If you are setting a clinic up from scratch, the registration and advertising obligations that sit behind this are in the start-up guides for the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. How reviews interact with being found at all is in local SEO for physical therapists. And if the reason you want more reviews is that the diary has gaps, the patient retention guide is the better place to start, because patients who finish their plan of care are the ones who write the reviews anyway. How we write and check pages like this one is set out in our editorial policy.

The short version

Ask everyone or ask nobody. Use one set of neutral words, send it after the visit as a link rather than at the desk, offer nothing in return, and keep a dated record of who was asked.

Then settle what you may do with the review once it exists, because that is where the five markets part company. The USA permits asking but not selective asking, and HIPAA governs your replies. The UK permits asking and even a disclosed incentive, bans suppression, and makes the duty over reviews you publish yourself non-delegable.

In Canada it is provincial, no province we read bans the request, Alberta permits testimonials and warns against eliciting them, and Manitoba's rules on inducements, free services and image consent do more work than any review rule would. Australia permits the review and restricts the use, which may include replying. New Zealand permits the request and then bars a testimonial that claims a therapeutic benefit from the advertisement entirely.

Reply as though the reviewer's confidentiality is still yours to protect, because it is. And keep the clinical judgement in view underneath the compliance: the reason British Columbia's regulator dislikes the ask is that a patient who feels obliged to praise you is a patient you may treat less objectively afterwards. That is worth more thought than the ranking.

References

College of Physiotherapists of Manitoba. Advertising and Marketing (practice direction), performance expectations A to I. Current and updated as of June 12, 2025. Adapted from the Core Standards of Practice for Canadian Physiotherapists, August 31, 2023. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://manitobaphysio.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Advertising-and-Marketing-1.pdf
College of Health and Care Professionals of British Columbia. Physical Therapists: Marketing and Promotions, section on soliciting testimonials or web reviews. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://chcpbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Marketing-Promotions-RPT-2024-08-01.pdf
College of Physiotherapists of Ontario. Advertising and Marketing Standard. Effective May 1, 2025. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://collegept.org/standard/advertising-and-marketing-standard/
College of Physiotherapists of Alberta. Good Practice: 10 examples of unprofessional advertising. Page updated July 13, 2026. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.cpta.ab.ca/news-and-updates/news/good-practice-10-examples-of-unprofessional-advertising/
Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, section 133 (Advertising), as set out in the Schedule to the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act 2009 (Queensland consolidation, in force at the date accessed; sch s 133 amd 2022 No. 22 s 85). Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/act-2009-045
Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and National Boards. Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, sections 4.2 and 4.3.1 to 4.3.3. Took effect December 14, 2020. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Resources/Advertising-hub/Advertising-guidelines-and-other-guidance/Advertising-guidelines.aspx
Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. Testimonials: understand the requirements (testimonial tool). Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Resources/Advertising-hub/Resources-for-advertisers/Testimonial-tool.aspx
Competition and Markets Authority. Fake reviews guidance (CMA208). Published April 4, 2025. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67eeb64fe9c76fa33048c790/CMA208_-_Fake_reviews_guidance.pdf
Competition and Markets Authority. Short guide for businesses: publishing consumer reviews and complying with consumer protection law. Published April 4, 2025. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fake-reviews/short-guide-for-businesses-publishing-consumer-reviews-and-complying-with-consumer-protection-law
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20 (banned commercial practices), paragraph 13, in force April 6, 2025 by S.I. 2025/272. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/13/schedule/20
Committee of Advertising Practice. UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct and Promotional Marketing (CAP Code), Section 03: Misleading advertising, rules 3.44 to 3.50. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.asa.org.uk/type/non_broadcast/code_section/03.html
16 CFR Part 465, Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, sections 465.4, 465.5 and 465.7. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-465
Federal Trade Commission. The Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule: Questions and Answers (16 CFR Part 465, effective October 21, 2024). Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumer-reviews-testimonials-rule-questions-answers
Federal Trade Commission. FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking
45 CFR 164.508, Uses and disclosures for which an authorization is required. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/164.508
US Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. Resolution Agreement and Corrective Action Plan, Elite Dental Associates (disclosure of patient information in replies to online reviews). Announced October 2, 2019. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/compliance-enforcement/agreements/elite/index.html
Advertising Standards Authority (New Zealand). Therapeutic and Health Advertising Code, Principle 2, rules 2(a) and 2(f) and the guidelines under rule 2(f). Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.asa.co.nz/codes/codes/therapeutic-and-health-advertising-code/
Advertising Standards Authority (New Zealand). Guidance Note on Advertising Health Services: definition of advertising, definition of a Health Service, and endorsements and testimonials. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://asa.co.nz/codes/guidance-notes/guidance-note-on-advertising-health-services/
Physiotherapy Board of New Zealand. Aotearoa New Zealand Physiotherapy Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://physioboard.org.nz/standards/code-of-ethics-and-professional-conduct
Google. Prohibited and restricted content: Maps User Generated Content Policy (fake engagement and rating manipulation). Accessed October 24, 2026. https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114?hl=en
American Physical Therapy Association. New Code of Ethics for the Physical Therapy Profession, adopted July 14, 2025, in effect January 1, 2026. Accessed October 24, 2026. https://www.apta.org/article/2026/01/02/new-code-of-ethics-for-the-physical-therapy-profession

Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-10-24.

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