Care home SEO is the work that helps families find a care home when they need one: in the Google map, on the website for questions about fees and funding, and in ChatGPT's answers. In the UK "care homes near me" gets 60,500 searches a month, yet on the Manchester results page we checked on 11 November 2026 three of the ten organic results were directories (carehome.co.uk, Lottie and OpenScore), and in Italy, on the equivalent search, none of the ten was a care home's own site.
Nobody chooses a care home in an afternoon.
A family gets there after months of caring at home, often after a hospital stay, with a son or daughter typing "care homes near me" late in the evening. They read reviews, look for fees, check the inspection rating. Then they call two or three homes and book one visit.
The mistakes we see most often on care home websites and Google profiles:
- a website with no page on fees and funding, which are exactly the questions families ask Google and ChatGPT;
- one Google profile for a group with several homes, or profiles whose names and categories do not match the sign on the door;
- the profile link pointing to the group homepage instead of the page of that home.
The UK guides on care home SEO are mostly agency service pages, and the figures they quote rarely have a source. We wanted to see what Google and ChatGPT actually show a family. So we measured it, in Italy (where we work) and on one UK search for comparison.
Why would an SEO agency know anything about care homes?
Because the mechanism is the same one we see on the local projects we run. Sunscape looks for land across Italy: with one page per region, launched in March 2026, organic impressions went from 329 to 5,809 a month in six months. We have no care homes among our clients with public data, and we will not invent any: the numbers below come from checks made for this article, with date and method.
What you will find here:
- how families search for a care home, with UK volumes;
- what Google shows in Manchester and in three Italian cities;
- how to set up the Google profile of a home, from category to reviews;
- the pages the website needs, starting with fees and funding;
- the ChatGPT test: which homes it recommended in Turin, and which sources it used.
How families search for a care home (almost always with a place)
Families search for a care home with a place attached: "care homes near me" gets 60,500 searches a month in the UK and "nursing homes near me" 14,800, while "care home SEO" itself gets about 10. The care type matters too: "dementia care homes near me" gets 2,400 searches a month.
| Search | Monthly searches (UK) | What the searcher wants |
|---|---|---|
| care homes near me | 60,500 | a home nearby |
| care homes | 40,500 | to understand options, find a home |
| nursing homes near me | 14,800 | a home with nursing care nearby |
| carehome.co.uk | 4,400 | the main directory, by name |
| dementia care homes near me | 2,400 | a home with dementia care |
| residential care homes near me | 1,900 | a residential home nearby |
| how much does a care home cost | 1,000 | fees, before calling |
| care home fees | 880 | fees, before calling |
Two things to take away.
First: 4,400 people a month type the name of a directory instead of searching for homes. That is how strong carehome.co.uk already is in this market.
Second: the money questions are small but decisive. 1,000 searches for "how much does a care home cost" are families one step from the phone call. The "People also ask" box on the Manchester page showed the same worries: "What is the average price per week for a care home?" and "Are care homes free on NHS?".
Italy has the same pattern with a twist: families use two words, "RSA" and "casa di riposo" (care home), with similar volumes. A home that writes only one of them loses half of the searches. If your homes serve more than one community, check which words they actually use.
What Google shows when a family searches for a care home (and why "near me" favours directories)
Google shows the map with 3 to 6 homes first, then the organic results, where care home websites and directories share the places very differently depending on the search. On 11 November 2026 we checked "care homes near me" on mobile with the location set to Manchester, and four Italian searches with DataForSEO.
| Search | Homes in the map | Reviews per profile | AI Overview | Care home and operator sites in organic results | Directories |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| care homes near me (Manchester) | 3 | 5 to 21 | no | 7 of 10 | 3 (carehome.co.uk, Lottie, OpenScore) |
| rsa milano (Milan) | 6 | 23 to 189 | no | 10 of 10 | 0 |
| rsa torino (Turin) | 4 | 30 to 98 | yes | 9 of 10 | 1 |
| rsa napoli (Naples) | 4 | 7 to 21 | yes | 4 of 10 (plus 3 health authority pages) | 3 |
| rsa vicino a me ("near me", Italy) | 4 | 3 to 23 | no | 0 of 10 | 9 |
With a city name, care home websites took 23 of 30 organic results across the three Italian cities. In Milan all ten were homes or operators.
With "near me", the page flips.
In Italy nine of ten results were directories, and most were about other cities: pages on Genoa, Novara and Cagliari shown to a family in Rome. In Manchester the picture was more balanced. Care UK, Lovett Care, MHA, Avery, HC-One and two smaller providers held seven places, the directories three, and carehome.co.uk ranked first with "There are 83 Care Homes in Manchester Area".
So should a home ignore "near me" searches?
No. On "near me" searches the game is played in the map, which sits above every directory, and only Google profiles get in. We measured how these searches behave sector by sector in near me searches.
Directories: where to be listed
A paid directory listing makes sense when that directory shows up on your town's first page: check before you sign. Either way, name, address and phone must match your Google profile exactly, as we explain in NAP consistency and in our guide to local citations. We found the same directory pattern in funeral home SEO.
When a family searches for a care home in your area, do they find you or a directory?
You have just seen how often directories take the "near me" results. We will review your Google profiles, website and listings together, and show you which local searches your homes are missing today.
Book a strategy callHow to set up a care home's Google Business Profile (one profile per home)
To appear in the map, each home needs its own verified Google Business Profile, with its real name, the category that describes its main activity and recent reviews. Google says it ranks local results by relevance, distance and prominence, as its official guide to local ranking explains: you cannot change distance, but you can work on the other two.
1. The category. Google's guidelines ask you to pick the fewest categories needed to describe your core business, and not to use categories as keywords. In the 18 Italian profiles we saw in the map, 13 used the local equivalent of "Retirement home", 4 "Nursing home" and one a wellness category: that last one ranked first in Rome, but for searches that are not its own. How to choose primary and secondary categories is in Google Business Profile categories.
2. The name. The same guidelines ask for your real-world business name and warn that adding unnecessary information can get the profile suspended; service and location details are among the examples. If the sign says, for example, "Rose Court", adding "Care Home Manchester" to the profile name is exactly the kind of addition that is at risk. If a competitor does it, you can report it as we explain in Google Maps spam.
3. One profile per home, linked to its own page. In Milan three of the six profiles in the map belonged to the same group, each with its own address and a link to that home's page. In Manchester, the first profile in the map linked to its home page with a tracking tag (utm_campaign=gbp), so the operator can count visits from Google Maps. We explain both in Google Business Profile for multiple locations and Google Business Profile insights.
Reviews: how many you need and how to ask
Fewer than most managers think. The three Manchester profiles in the map had between 5 and 21 reviews; across the three Italian cities the median was 32. And in Milan a home rated 2.8 from 34 reviews still came third in the map.
So bad reviews don't matter?
They matter for the phone call: a family reading three reviews about cancelled visits will not ring, however high the profile ranks.
Reviews of a care home are almost always written by relatives, and the right moment to ask is after the first months, at a care review or a family event. A card with a QR code to the profile works better than an automated message. No discounts in return: Google's content policy forbids incentives. In replies, never mention a resident's name or health. Templates are in how to respond to Google reviews and the full method in Google reviews.
The pages a care home website needs (fees and funding first)
A care home website should answer the questions a family asks before calling: what care the home provides, how much it costs, how funding works, what the inspection rating is, and whether there is a dementia unit. In Italy none of the nine guides we read mentions public funding, yet it was the first thing ChatGPT explained in our test.
| Page | Search it serves (UK monthly volume) | What it should contain |
|---|---|---|
| Fees | how much does a care home cost (1,000), care home fees (880) | weekly fee or range, what is included, what is extra |
| Funding | "Are care homes free on NHS?" (People also ask) | how funding works in your area, who to contact, in plain words |
| Dementia care | dementia care homes near me (2,400) | places, secure spaces, garden, trained staff |
| Nursing or residential | "What is the difference between a care home and a nursing home?" | who the home is for, respite stays |
| Inspection rating | trust, before booking a visit | the current rating, displayed as required |
| Visiting and daily life | practical questions from relatives | visiting hours, meals, activities, real photos |
The fees page is the one most homes avoid. Directories use that gap: Lottie's Manchester page promises "Costs & CQC Ratings" in its title. A range and a list of what is included is enough to start.
Location pages only where the home really serves that area. A page that only swaps the town name is a duplicate. The method is in location pages SEO, and the wider picture for regulated care in healthcare SEO.
Which care homes ChatGPT recommends (a test in Turin: 5 homes, only 2 in the map)
In our test ChatGPT recommended five care homes in Turin, and only two of them were among the profiles in the Google map; to explain funding it used regional, city and health authority pages. On 11 November 2026 we asked ChatGPT, with web search on (via DataForSEO), in Italian: "Can you recommend an RSA in Turin for my mother, who is not self-sufficient? Which homes should I consider?".
| Home recommended | Page linked by ChatGPT | Google reviews | In the Google map? | In the organic results? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RSA Massimo D'Azeglio | the home's website | 98 | yes, first | yes, 2nd and 10th (and an ad) |
| RSA Servais | the home's "facility" page | 33 | no (carousel only) | yes, 8th |
| Residenza Richelmy | the operator's website | 75 | no | no |
| RSA Crocetta | none | 98 | yes, third | no |
| Opera Pia Lotteri | none | 79 | no | no |
All five had at least 33 reviews, and for each one ChatGPT listed specific services taken from websites and profiles: dementia units, rehabilitation, number of beds, accreditation.
For money, it cited no care home at all. It explained that in Piedmont the health authority pays 50% of the fee for a funded place, using the pages of the Piedmont Region, the City of Turin and the local health authority. A home with a clear funding page could have been that source.
Google's AI Overviews, present in Turin and Naples, behaved in a similar way: they cited the sites of large operators, one independent home and a directory and, in Naples, a home that puts its starting price in its page title. Nobody can promise a citation, but a page that says who the home is for, what it costs and how to get a place has more chances of being used than a page about "care and compassion". LocalBusiness structured data, with name, address and phone identical to the profile, helps connect the website to the right profile. Our full test on how AI tools pick local businesses is in local AI visibility, and it is the work we do in our GEO service.
Google Ads for a care home (busier in the UK than in Italy)
Google Ads helps a care home when it has rooms to fill quickly. Competition is higher in the UK: Google rates "care homes near me" at 53 out of 100 for competition, against 32 for the Italian equivalent. In Turin, two of the four ads above the map came from directories offering to find a place for the family ("Find the best one in 10 minutes"). An ad only pays if the landing page answers on fees and funding: an ad that lands on the homepage with a garden photo buys clicks that never become calls. That is the work we do in our Google Ads service.
Where to start and how long it takes (a four-step plan)
Start with the Google profile, which works on "near me" searches straight away, then build the website pages, which take months. We measured real timelines in how long SEO takes: on Sunscape the first rise in impressions came within six months.
- Week one: the profile. One profile per home, real name, one consistent main category, visiting hours, real photos, link to the home's own page. The step-by-step guide is Google Business Profile optimisation.
- Month one: fees and funding. Two pages written for your area, in the words families use.
- Every month: reviews and replies. Few but steady: in Manchester 5 to 21 were enough to be in the map.
- Every quarter: a check. Calls and visit requests from the profile and the website, and your town's results page read again, as we did here.
The wider picture is in our local SEO guide. If you want us to handle it, see our SEO service.
Care home SEO: frequently asked questions
It depends: if the waiting list covers only funded places, private rooms and respite stays still need filling, and families look for them on Google. In our Italian check, none of the ten organic results for the "near me" search was a home's own site: a home with a good profile and the right pages picks up those enquiries.
It depends on the town: the three Manchester profiles in the map had between 5 and 21 reviews, and across three Italian cities the median was 32. Category, distance and a complete profile count too: a home rated 2.8 was third in the Milan map.
Yes. "How much does a care home cost" gets 1,000 searches a month in the UK and directories promise costs in their page titles. A weekly range with what is included and what is extra is enough, plus a plain explanation of how funding works.
It depends: check whether the directory appears on your town's first page. In Manchester carehome.co.uk ranked first and 4,400 people a month search for it by name, so a complete listing with the same details as your Google profile makes sense there.
It depends: nobody can guarantee it. In our Turin test ChatGPT recommended five homes, all with at least 33 Google reviews and clear service details on their websites, and only two of them were in the Google map.
In short (and what Italy teaches UK care homes)
Families search with a place: "care homes near me" gets 60,500 searches a month.
With a town name, homes win; with "near me", directories take the organic results.
In the map, a few dozen reviews and a consistent category are enough.
Fees and funding are the pages most homes lack, and ChatGPT took them from public bodies.
One last idea. In England homes must display their Care Quality Commission rating (Regulation 20A), so every home has the same trust signal. Italy has no single public rating, and in our test ChatGPT went to the region and the health authority to explain the money. The same gap exists in the UK: the home that explains funding in its own area, clearly and with a date, is the one an AI can quote when a family asks how they will pay.
