A practical playbook for practice owners.
Most practice owners who talk with me know what they spent on Google Ads last month. Far fewer can tell you how many new-patient appointments those ads produced, or whether their Google Business Profile still lists the hours from before they added Saturday hygiene. That gap is where marketing budgets quietly leak.
The usual sequence goes like this: new-patient numbers soften, someone recommends ads, the ads drive clicks and calls, and three months later nobody is sure what worked. Paid search isn't the problem. The problem is buying traffic before the local foundation (the profile patients see, the reviews they read, and the tracking that tells you what happened) can turn that traffic into booked patients.
Why the foundation matters more right now
The business case for getting this right is tighter than it was a few years ago. In the ADA Health Policy Institute's Q2 2026 State of the U.S. Dental Economy report, about a quarter of dentists (26%) said they were not busy enough and could have treated more patients. That was an improvement from Q1 2026, when roughly one-third said the same [1][2]. Consumer dental spending was up only 1% over the prior 12 months, and HPI's reimbursement index, averaged across payer types, rose 19% from January 2021 while overall inflation ran 27% [1]. HPI also reported that 23.5% of dentists had dropped out of some insurance networks so far in 2026 [1]. Every practice that leaves a network loses one source of directory-driven new patients and has to replace it with patients who find the practice on their own.
The demand is there. CDC's latest National Health Interview Survey estimate shows 66.7% of U.S. adults had a dental exam or cleaning in the past year [3], which means a large share of adults are due, overdue, or looking. Many of them will start with a local search.
Google is unusually direct about how local results work. Its Business Profile help center says local ranking is based mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence. It says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to appear in local results, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business's local ranking [4]. You can't control distance. You can control the other two.
Reviews also do work after the ranking. In BrightLocal's 2025 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,026 U.S. adults, 74% said they use two or more websites to read reviews before choosing a local business. Only 7% said they don't expect a business to respond to reviews, and 63% expect a response within two to three days up to a week [7]. The same survey found 96% of consumers are open to writing a review, and email was the request method they were most likely to act on (40%), followed by being asked in person (27%) [7]. For healthcare, consumers said a review request should come roughly three days to a week after the visit [7].
The takeaway is not "get more five-star reviews." It's that a complete profile, a steady flow of real reviews, and visible, professional responses are what turn a search impression into a phone call.
The in-office playbook
You can run most of this with your office manager and a one-hour monthly meeting.
- Audit your Google Business Profile this week.
Confirm the practice is verified. Check the name, address, phone, hours (including holiday hours), primary and secondary categories, website link, appointment link, accessibility and parking attributes, and the services you actually want more of. Google says incomplete or inaccurate information can keep a profile out of relevant searches [4]. Add current photos of the office, the team, and the operatories. If you have multiple locations or doctors, check each listing.
- Make review requests a system, not a favor.
Use Google's own review link or QR code [5]. Send the request by email or text a few days after the appointment and ask everyone the same way. Google's policies prohibit offering incentives for reviews and prohibit "selectively soliciting positive reviews," so no discounts, no raffles, and no screening patients first to send only the happy ones to Google. Google also says merchants shouldn't pressure patients to review while on the premises or set staff review quotas [6]. Steady, policy-clean volume beats a one-time blitz.
- Respond to every review, and say nothing clinical.
Reply within a week, positive or negative. Thank the patient, keep it short, and move any complaint offline with a phone number. Never confirm that the reviewer is a patient, and never mention treatment, appointments, or insurance. The HHS Office for Civil Rights settled with a California practice, New Vision Dental, which paid $23,000 and agreed to a corrective action plan after review responses on Yelp disclosed patients' protected health information [8]. Put a short approved-response template in writing and decide who is allowed to post.
- Build a simple measurement loop before you add spend.
Your Business Profile performance report shows views, calls, website clicks, and direction requests. Note that "calls" counts taps on the call button, not completed calls, and that the data includes interactions from both organic results and Google Ads [9]. So don't stop there. Each month, track four numbers in one spreadsheet:
- Profile calls and website clicks (from the performance report)
- Website appointment requests and form fills
- New-patient appointments booked, by source ("How did you hear about us?" asked at scheduling, every time)
- New patients who actually showed up
Also track your own new-patient wait time. HPI's national average was 13.9 business days in Q2 2026 [1]. If yours is three weeks, more advertising may just produce more patients who book elsewhere.
- Then turn on paid ads, and measure them by appointments.
Once the profile is clean, reviews are flowing, and you have a baseline, paid search has something solid to amplify. In Google Ads, set up phone call conversion tracking with a sensible minimum call length. Better yet, import conversions from your own records so you're counting calls that became appointments rather than every ring [10]. Judge campaigns on cost per booked new patient, not cost per click. Social ads can come later, for specific services or reactivation, once you know what a new patient is worth to you.
- Review monthly; adjust quarterly.
Check the four numbers, read the new reviews as a team, and fix whatever patients keep mentioning. Front-desk phone handling usually matters more than any keyword list.
Where to get help
Most of this playbook is work your team can own. If you'd rather have a partner run the profile and review program, the search and AI-visibility, the ROI tracking, and eventually the Google and Meta ads in that order, InfoStar Productions is an option: a family-owned firm, founded in 1993, that works with practices nationwide. No matter who you work with, ask them to show you the foundation and tracking before they ask for a bigger ad budget.
- State of the U.S. Dental Economy: Q2 2026. American Dental Association Health Policy Institute. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://www.ada.org/-/media/project/ada-organization/ada/ada-org/files/resources/research/hpi/state_us_dental_economy_q22026.pdf
- State of the U.S. Dental Economy: Q1 2026. American Dental Association Health Policy Institute. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://www.ada.org/-/media/project/ada-organization/ada/ada-org/files/resources/research/hpi/state_us_dental_economy_q12026.pdf
- FastStats: oral and dental health. National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/dental.htm
- Tips to improve your local ranking on Google. Google Business Profile Help. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091
- Tips to get more reviews. Google Business Profile Help. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474122
- Prohibited and restricted content. Google Maps User Generated Content Policy. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114
- Local Consumer Review Survey 2025. BrightLocal. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey-2025
- Resolution agreement: New Vision Dental. US Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/compliance-enforcement/agreements/new-vision/index.html
- Understand your Business Profile performance analytics. Google Business Profile Help. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://support.google.com/business/answer/7689763
- About phone call conversion tracking. Google Ads Help. Accessed October 7, 2026. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100664