How to Get More Google Reviews for Your Dental Practice

When someone moves to a new area or gets fed up with their current dentist, they search "dentist near me" and look at the stars. A practice with 300 reviews at 4.8 looks like a safe pair of hands. A practice with 12 reviews looks like a gamble, however good the dentistry is.

Here's how dental practices can get more Google reviews from the patients they already have, and how to reply to them without breaking patient confidentiality.

Why patients don't leave reviews

Most patients who are happy with their dentist never review them. It's not because they don't rate you. It's because:

• There's no "moment". A check-up doesn't feel like an event worth writing about, even if it went perfectly.
• They want to get out of the building. Plenty of patients find appointments stressful. Reviewing you is the last thing on their mind as they leave.
• Nobody asked. Reception is busy, the next patient is waiting, and asking for a review feels awkward.

The fix for all three is the same: ask every patient, at the right time, in a way that takes them seconds.

When to ask

Some appointments are much better moments to ask than others.

The best moments

• The end of a course of treatment. The final appointment of an implant, Invisalign or orthodontic course. The patient has invested months and can finally see the result.
• After cosmetic work. Whitening, veneers, bonding. People are delighted with how they look and often want to tell someone.
• After an emergency appointment. They came in with toothache and left without it. Relief is a powerful motivator.
• After a nervous patient's appointment went well. If someone was anxious and your team made it easy, they're often keen to say so, partly to reassure other nervous patients.

Routine appointments count too

Check-ups and hygienist visits make up most of your appointments, so they're where most of your reviews will come from over time. Patients won't write much, but a steady flow of short "friendly team, on time, painless as always" reviews adds up quickly.

How to ask

Send a text a few hours later

The most effective way to ask is a short text message a few hours after the appointment, with a direct link to your Google review page. The patient is home, they've had time to settle, and leaving a review takes one tap.

"Hi Sarah, thanks for visiting Riverside Dental today. If you have a moment, we'd really appreciate a quick Google review. It helps other local people find a dentist they can trust: [link]"

Keep it to one message and, at most, one gentle reminder a couple of days later.

Have reception mention it

A quick mention at reception helps, especially for patients who have just finished a long course of treatment: "We'll send you a text later. If you're happy with everything, a Google review would really help us."

It's better than asking patients to leave a review there and then on a tablet. Reviews posted from your premises can look suspicious to Google's spam filters, and patients don't like being put on the spot.

Don't set targets for your team

It's tempting to set reception or clinicians a target for how many reviews they bring in. Don't. Google's rules specifically ban businesses from setting staff quotas for reviews, and it tends to lead to exactly the kind of pushy asking patients dislike.

What not to do

• Don't offer anything in return. A free whitening top-up or a prize draw for reviews breaks Google's rules. Under UK consumer law, an incentivised review also has to be clearly disclosed as one.
• Don't ask staff, friends or family to review the practice. Reviews must come from genuine patients.
• Don't write reviews for patients, even if they ask you to.
• Don't ask for "5-star" reviews. Ask for an honest review. Google doesn't allow businesses to steer the rating.

Replying to reviews without breaching confidentiality

This is where dental practices need to be more careful than most businesses.

Your duty of patient confidentiality under the GDC's standards applies to review replies too. Even confirming that someone is a patient can be a breach, and discussing their treatment in public certainly is. That's true even if the patient has already shared the details in their own review.

So every reply should be written as if you can't confirm who the reviewer is.

Replying to a positive review

"Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a review. We're delighted to hear you had a good experience. The whole team will be pleased to read this."

Replying to a negative review

"Thank you for your feedback. We're sorry to hear you're unhappy. We can't discuss any individual's care online, but we take every concern seriously and would welcome the chance to talk this through. Please contact our practice manager on [number] or [email]."

Notice what neither reply does: it doesn't mention the treatment, the appointment, or even confirm the person was seen at the practice.

If a complaint is serious, it should go through your practice's complaints procedure, not the review section. For more on handling unfair reviews, and what Google will and won't remove, see our guide to disputing a Google review.

What about NHS website reviews?

Patients can also rate and review dental practices on the NHS website. It's worth keeping an eye on those and replying in the same way. But for new patients searching for a dentist, Google is usually the first place they look, so that's where most practices should focus their effort.

How many reviews do you need?

Look at the practices that appear in the top three results on Google Maps when you search "dentist" in your area. That's your benchmark. In busy towns and cities, the leading practices often have hundreds of reviews.

That can feel like a long way off. But a practice seeing 100 patients a week only needs a small share of them to leave a review to add several reviews every week. Within a year, that's a profile that stands out.

The practices with the most reviews aren't necessarily the best. They're just the ones that ask consistently.