Dental practices on Google: the 2026 benchmark report
Review counts, ratings, website presence and hours for 86,875 dental practices, computed from public Google Business Profile listings across 51 states.
Reviews
| Review count | Value |
|---|---|
| Median | 39 |
| Average (mean) | 197.2 |
| 25th percentile | 2 |
| 75th percentile | 265 |
| 90th percentile | 586 |
Share of dental practices by review count:
| Bucket | Share of listings |
|---|---|
| 0 reviews | 18.5% |
| Under 10 | 37% |
| Under 25 | 45.6% |
| 100 or more | 40.3% |
| 500 or more | 12.8% |
Ratings
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Average rating | 4.62 |
| Rated 5.0 | 29.6% |
| Rated 4.5 or higher | 79.2% |
| Rated under 4.0 | 9.8% |
| No rating yet | 14.8% |
Websites
| Website status | Share |
|---|---|
| Website listed | 78.5% |
| No website listed | 21.5% |
| Own domain | 78.2% |
| Social profile only | 0.2% |
| Free or DIY builder | 0.1% |
Median review count for dental practices with a website: 103. Without one: 1.
Profile completeness and hours
| Profile field | Share |
|---|---|
| Has a profile photo | 97.1% |
| Public email on profile | 21.2% |
| Open 24 hours | 2.2% |
| Open Saturday | 14.1% |
| Open Sunday | 3.8% |
| No hours listed | 22.3% |
Where the listings are
| State | Listings |
|---|---|
| CT | 2,957 |
| MI | 2,944 |
| OH | 2,890 |
| NY | 2,846 |
| PA | 2,816 |
| MN | 2,797 |
| IL | 2,679 |
| NJ | 2,657 |
| MD | 2,586 |
| MO | 2,576 |
| CA | 2,533 |
| IN | 2,477 |
Primary categories
| Google category | Listings |
|---|---|
| Dentist | 60,708 |
| Dental clinic | 4,709 |
| Orthodontist | 4,359 |
| Pediatric dentist | 3,207 |
| Oral surgeon | 1,946 |
| Endodontist | 1,555 |
| Cosmetic dentist | 1,390 |
| Medical clinic | 990 |
Read the percentiles, not the average
Half of the dental practices on Google have 39 reviews or fewer. That is the number most owners underestimate, usually because they are comparing themselves to the two loudest offices in town rather than to the country.
The comfort is short-lived. Google shows three businesses in the map pack, and the practices that hold those spots in a real metro sit far up the distribution. The 75th percentile is 265 reviews and the 90th is 586. Chase those, not the median.
The mean of 197.2 is not a useful target either. It is dragged upward by large multi-location groups and DSO offices that have been collecting reviews for a decade with an automated system. The 25th percentile tells the other half of the story: a quarter of all dental listings have 2 reviews or fewer. This is a barbell market. 18.5% have none at all and 37% are under ten, while 40.3% have passed 100 and 12.8% are past 500.
Rating is table stakes, count is the differentiator
Average rating across the set is 4.6 stars, and 79.2% of practices are at 4.5 or better. Almost a third, 29.6%, show a perfect 5.0, and most of those are offices with a handful of reviews. A 5.0 with 11 reviews reads to a patient as untested. A 4.7 with 340 reads as a real practice that has been doing this a long time.
The place rating does matter is the floor. 9.8% sit below 4.0, and below 4.0 a patient choosing a dentist for the first time generally stops reading and moves to the next listing. Note also that 14.8% of listings carry no rating at all, which for a practice open more than a year is a signal that nobody in the office has ever asked.
The website gap
21.5% of dental practices link no website from their Google profile. Practices with a site have a median of 103 reviews. Practices without one have 1.
We are not claiming the website produces the reviews. Practices that run the business seriously do both. But the correlation is wide enough to be useful in two directions. If a competitor in your area has no site linked, they are not going to fight you for the map pack or for an AI answer. If it is your practice in that 21.5%, that is the single largest gap on this page and the fastest to close.
The website also matters more in dentistry than in most local trades, because a patient choosing a dentist is deciding about their own body and their own money. They want to see the insurance plans you take, the doctor's face, and what a new patient visit costs before they will dial.
Hours are an underused lever
Only 14.1% of dental practices list Saturday hours and 3.8% list Sunday. Working adults are the patients most likely to have benefits and least likely to take a Tuesday morning off. One Saturday a month, listed accurately on the profile, is a real acquisition channel in a market where most offices are closed.
Meanwhile 22.3% list no hours at all, which makes Google show nothing useful and gives a patient a reason to keep scrolling. 97.1% have at least one photo, so an office with none is instantly in the bottom few percent of the market. Public email is rarer, at 21.2%, and that one is a judgment call given the volume of spam.
What to do with this
- Pull your own numbers first. Open your Google Business Profile and write down review count, rating, whether a website is linked, and whether your hours are accurate this week.
- Place yourself honestly. Below 39 is the bottom half. Below 265 is the bottom three quarters. Map-pack winners in real metros live near 586.
- If you are in the 21.5% with no website, fix that before anything else. A six-page site with tap-to-call, an insurance page and a real new patient price is about a week of work. See the website guide.
- Set a review pace and hold the office to it. Two to four a week, asked at checkout, moves a 40-review practice past the 75th percentile inside two years. The reviews guide has the compliant scripts.
- List accurate hours, add one late evening or one Saturday a month if the schedule allows, and turn on missed-call text-back. Run the calculator to see what unanswered calls are costing.
- Only then buy ads. Traffic aimed at a profile with nine reviews and no site is tuition paid on your competitor's behalf.
Method
This report aggregates 86,875 public Google Business Profile listings collected from Google Maps searches for dental practices across every US state, deduplicated by place. Review counts and ratings are as displayed on the listing at collection time. "Website listed" means the profile links to any URL; we classify the URL as an owned domain, a social profile, or a free site builder by hostname. Figures are refreshed monthly. Cite this page as: Dental Practice Growth Lab, "Dental practices on Google benchmark report", 2026.