What Well-Reviewed Dental Practices Have in Common
We checked the websites and Google listings of more than 1,000 independent dental practices. Here's the baseline most well-reviewed practices share, and a checklist to see where you stand.
- Practices checked
- 1,000+
- Markets
- 60
- Top-rated (4.7 stars or better)
- 532
The Short Answer
- Listed on Google as a dentist
- 98%
- Tap-to-call phone link
- 94%
- Dentist named on the homepage
- 89%
- A page about the dentist
- 87%
Share of the 532 top-rated practices (4.7 stars or better, a median of about 813 reviews). If you're missing one, start there.
No secret feature
Compared at a similar number of reviews, higher- and lower-rated practices looked alike. Photos and new reviews follow how many patients a practice sees more than its star rating.
A checklist, not a contest
If you have the basics, good. If you don't, they're fixable, and we'll help.
The Baseline
What top-rated practices have. Items at 80% or more are the baseline.
On your Google listing
- Listed as a dentist (not a generic category)
- 98%
- Practice name on the listing matches your website
- 92%
- Listing phone number appears on your website
- 87%
- 10 or more photos
- 80%
About 1 in 8 practices has a phone number on Google that doesn't appear on its own website. It's the cheapest mismatch to fix.
On your website
- Phone link you can tap on a phone
- 94%
- Dentist named on the homepage
- 89%
- Phone number visible without scrolling
- 87%
- A page with the dentist's bio
- 87%
- Dentist details written so Google can read them directly
- 87%
Common, but not universal (60 to 80%)
- Financing or payment plans mentioned
- 77%
- Credentials or memberships mentioned
- 75%
- A new Google review in the last 90 days
- at least 69%
- Book or schedule button visible without scrolling
- 60%
Nice to have, not baseline: a blog (57%), an in-house membership plan (44%), before-and-after photos (43%), video on the homepage (41%), a real online scheduler (35%), awards or "best of" badges (30%), a specific new-patient offer (23%).
Your Listing Grows With Your Patients
Patients upload photos and leave reviews, so a Google listing fills up as a practice gets busier. Here it is by how many reviews a practice has:
| Reviews on Google | 10+ photos | New review in 90 days |
|---|---|---|
| Under 150 | 36% | at least 31% |
| 150 to 299 | 62% | at least 57% |
| 300 to 599 | 65% | at least 53% |
| 600 or more | 85% | at least 73% |
So we don't call photos or recent reviews a secret of top-rated practices. They go up with volume. If you have patients but a quiet review stream or a thin listing, you're probably not asking, and not adding your own photos. Both take minutes.
Does It Vary by Market Size?
Top-rated practices that have it, by size of market.
| Item | Large | Mid-size | Small |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10+ photos on the listing | 85% | 83% | 71% |
| A new Google review in the last 90 days | at least 69% | at least 70% | at least 70% |
| Tap-to-call phone link | 96% | 94% | 90% |
| Credentials mentioned | 78% | 78% | 68% |
| A real online scheduler | 40% | 36% | 30% |
The basics hold up in every market size. Smaller towns run a little lower on the extras, which also means a practice there that covers them stands out more.
What Didn't Seem to Matter
Speed and technical scores
Top-rated practices' sites score about the same as typical ones on Google's own tests. A fast site is good for patients. It isn't what separates these groups.
- Mobile performance
- 57 vs 59
- Accessibility
- 88 vs 89
- Best practices
- 96 vs 96
Top-rated vs typical, Google's 0–100 scores.
A new-patient special
23% of top-rated practices vs 21% of typical ones.
What This Doesn't Tell You
It's a snapshot, not a cause.
We can say what well-reviewed practices tend to have. We can't say adding any of it will raise your rating. Reviews come from the care patients get.
Rating and size travel together.
The best-reviewed practices are also the busiest (a median of 813 reviews vs 186 for typical ones). When we compared practices of similar size, we found no website difference worth reporting.
Some of what matters on a listing can't be seen from outside.
The description you write, your services, booking link, posts and review replies sit behind the owner's login. We didn't measure them.
Recent reviews are a minimum.
Google shows us 5 reviews per listing, chosen by relevance rather than date. When one of them is under 90 days old, we know the practice has a recent review. When none is, a newer one may still exist that Google didn't show. So every "new review in 90 days" figure here is "at least", and the real share is higher.
Independent practices with websites only.
Chains, specialists and practices without a site aren't included.
Your Checklist
Tick what you have. If you don't, that's fine. It's a good place to start.
Or let us fill it in for you →On your Google listing
- Listed as a dentist
- Name matches your website exactly
- Phone number matches your website
- 10 or more photos of your office, team and work
- A new review in the last 90 days (a good sign you're asking)
On your website
- Tap-to-call phone link
- Phone number visible without scrolling
- Dentist named on the homepage, with a bio page
- Dentist details written so Google can read them
- Financing or payment plans explained
- Credentials listed
How we did it
We picked 60 US markets (16 large, 22 mid-size, 22 small) and found independent general and family dental practices with a website of their own. We left out chains and corporate groups, specialists, and community health centers.
In each market we ranked practices on Google's star rating and number of reviews, weighted so a 5.0 from 12 reviews doesn't beat a 4.9 from 900. Top-rated (532 practices) are the highest scorers, with at least 4.7 stars. Typical (542 practices) sit in the middle of the pack for review count.
We checked each website and Google listing for dozens of things, reviewing the page and its key sub-pages on a phone and a desktop screen, and pulling the listing from Google's own data.
We checked our automated checks against a hand-labelled sample of 60 practice sites. Twelve of fifteen agreed with the hand labels at least 85% of the time; those are the ones in this report. Whether a site shows patient reviews, names insurers, or uses real photos did not clear that bar yet, so we left them out. We'd rather say less than say it wrong.
One more check: we looked at whether practices with a similar number of reviews differed by rating. Among 105 top-rated and 85 typical practices with 300 to 599 reviews, none of the 17 apparent advantages held up. That's why this page reports a baseline, not a list of what makes a practice top-rated.
Check Your Practice Against This List.
Enter your website and see this checklist filled in for your practice in about a minute. Free. No call, no email needed.