Most dental practices we audit collect somewhere between 8 and 20 Google reviews per year. The practices outranking corporate chains in their local market collect 4 to 6 per week. The difference is rarely the patients — it's the cadence.
Why reviews matter for dental specifically
Google's local pack ranks dental queries primarily on three signals: proximity, total review count, and review recency-weighted rating. The last one rewards practices that keep new reviews flowing; a 4.9-star practice with no reviews in the last six months loses to a 4.7-star practice with a review every week.
The four-step cadence
- T+4 hours after appointment: SMS asking how the visit went. Two-question NPS.
- T+24 hours (if NPS ≥ 8): Direct link to your Google review page, pre-filled with a one-tap rating.
- T+72 hours (if no review yet): Second SMS, same link, with a soft reminder.
- T+7 days (if still no review): One last email, then stop. Never harass.
What changes
Across the dental scans we run, practices that adopt the cadence and run it consistently for 4-6 months hit three milestones in this order:
- Average Google rating moves from low-4.x range to 4.6 or higher.
- Profile appears in the local-3-pack for 3-5 additional non-branded searches.
- New patient calls attributable to Google increase 25 to 40%.
The most common pushback is "but our patients won't leave reviews." They will — they just won't unprompted. The cadence is the prompt.