More new-patient calls for the treatments your practice wants to grow

How do patients find a dentist on Google?

They search in four different ways, and each one is a different kind of patient. A practice that only shows up for its own name and "dentist near me" is missing three of the four.

For the searches with a place in them, Google shows the map pack first. Google says it ranks those results on relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot move your building. Prominence builds from reviews, links and mentions. Relevance is the part your website controls: a page about dental implants at your practice tells Google you place implants in a way a one-line mention on a "Services" page never will.

Which dental searches bring in the most revenue?

Usually the treatment searches, and your own production report will confirm it. Run the arithmetic: if one implant or aligner case is worth $X to you and a new hygiene patient brings in $Y a year, work out how many hygiene patients one extra case a month equals. That number tells you whether to ask for "more traffic" or for implant consults, and which pages deserve to be built first.

Hygiene patients are still the base: they refer family and fill a new associate's schedule. Decide the mix on purpose. A practice with a full hygiene book and an empty surgical column needs different pages from a startup with two empty chairs.

Do insurance searches matter for a dental practice?

Yes, because most patients have a plan and many start with it. The ADA's Health Policy Institute reports that the share of the US population with no dental benefits fell to roughly one-quarter in 2023, and about 1 in 5 people had public coverage through Medicaid or CHIP. Everyone else is a patient who may type their plan's name into the search box.

The usual website answer is "we accept most insurance", which matches no search and answers no question. Publish the actual list of plans you are in network with, keep it current, and say what happens for out-of-network patients: whether you file the claim, and what they pay on the day. If you are fee-for-service by choice, say so plainly and explain your membership plan or financing instead.

The table below is a different kind of search: practices looking for marketing help. It shows how many owners and managers in each market are asking the question you are reading about now.

Are DSOs and group practices beating independents in search?

In some markets, yes, and the reason is budget and consistency, not better dentistry. The ADA reported that 13 percent of US dentists were affiliated with a dental service organization in 2022, and 23 percent of dentists fewer than 10 years out of school. A group with a central marketing team can keep every location's hours, plans and booking link accurate, which a busy single practice often lets slip.

Where a group is often weak is the page itself. Open a few group location pages in your town: many are one template with the town name swapped, and the dentist a patient will actually see is hard to find. An independent practice can do what a template cannot: name the dentist who places the implants, show their training, describe the first visit in that building, and use photos of the real team.

If you run several locations yourself, the same warning applies to you. Google's spam policies list pages targeted at specific cities that funnel users to one page as doorway abuse. A location page earns its place when the dentists, hours, plans and services on it are specific to that office.

What do dental websites usually get wrong?

• One "Services" page for everything. Implants, aligners, sedation and emergency care each need a page that answers the questions that patient asks. A bullet list gives Google nothing to match.
• An emergency page that hides the phone number. A person with a broken tooth will not scroll. Put the number, same-day policy and real hours at the top.
• Dentist bios with no substance. Google says it gives more weight to expertise and trust on health topics and encourages clear information about who wrote a page. Dental school, license, continuing education in the treatment and years doing it belong on the bio and on the treatment page.
• Smile galleries without paperwork. HIPAA requires a covered practice to get a patient's authorization before using their health information for marketing. Treat before-and-after photos that way, and have your compliance adviser confirm your form covers the website.
• A redesign that dropped the old pages. If calls fell after a new site, read our guide to a traffic drop after a website redesign before paying for anything new.

Should a dentist use SEO, Google Ads or Local Services Ads?

They do different jobs, and many practices need more than one. We do the website SEO and AI-search work. We do not run ads or manage Business Profiles, so this is a description, not a pitch.

Does AI search matter for dentists yet?

It matters for the researched treatments first. A patient weighing implants or clear aligners may ask ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode which dentist to see in their city, and get three names with reasons. Ask it yourself and note whether your practice is named and which pages the answer points to. Answers change between runs, so one check is a snapshot, not a verdict.

Being named and being cited are separate things, and schema markup alone does not get you either. Our AI search optimization work starts there, and our guide to why a business is missing from AI search explains the checks.

What we would check on your site first

1. Which of the four search types your pages can actually answer, and which have no page at all.
2. Whether Google has indexed your treatment and location pages. Our guide to pages not indexed covers the usual causes, and technical SEO is the fix.
3. Whether a new patient can call or book from a phone in under a minute.
4. Whether new-patient calls and forms are counted by source, so you can tell a booked patient from a visit.

Send us your site through the free site check. You get one useful finding in writing within two business days, with no call required. Our guide to getting more dental patients covers the phone, recall and channel choices around it.