The profile was set up by whoever built the website in 2019. The hours still show the old Friday half day, the photos are the stock ones the agency chose, and the services section is empty. Patients see this before they see the practice. Most of it takes an afternoon to fix.
Which category should a dental practice choose
The primary category carries the most weight for which searches you appear in. “Dentist” is right for a general practice. If most of the work is orthodontics, pediatric dentistry, oral surgery or implants, choose that as primary and add “Dentist” as an additional category. Add the others you genuinely offer: “Cosmetic dentist”, “Emergency dental service”, “Dental hygienist”, “Teeth whitening service”. Do not add categories for things you do not do; Google can ask for evidence and a patient who arrives for a service you do not provide leaves a review.
Each practitioner can also have a practitioner profile, separate from the practice. Keep them: a dentist’s own profile with the practice address does not compete with the practice profile as long as the names are different and the categories make sense.
List every service by name
Under Edit profile there is a services section. Each service is a name, an optional price and a short description. Most dental profiles have none. Add each service you offer as a patient would say it: “Dental cleaning”, “Dental crown”, “Root canal”, “Dental implant”, “Invisalign”, “Wisdom tooth removal”, “Emergency dental care”, “Dentures”. If you accept a specific plan or offer a membership plan, say it in the description.
Hours, and the fields that get left blank
Hours should match the door. Set holiday hours in advance for the days you close, because a profile that says open on Thanksgiving earns a one-star review from the person who drove over. If you have a separate phone line for emergencies, add it as an additional number.
Attributes: wheelchair accessible entrance, restroom, parking, languages spoken, and whether you accept new patients. Appointment link: point it at your booking page, not the home page. Description: 750 characters, plain words, what you do and where you are. Nothing in it changes rank; it is read by people.
Photos that help and photos that do not
Real photos of the front of the building from the street, the reception, an operatory, and the team. The exterior shot matters most: patients use it to recognise the place. Add a few each month. Skip stock photos of smiling models and anything with text laid over it. Patients upload their own, and you cannot remove those unless they break policy, so the practice photos need to be good enough to sit beside them.
Reviews: the part that keeps moving
Ask every patient at check-out, with a direct link to the review form, in a text or on a card with a QR code. Ask every patient, not the ones who seemed happy; Google’s policy forbids selective solicitation and any incentive. Answer every review within a week, including the good ones, in two or three sentences.
Replies from a dental practice carry one extra rule: do not confirm that the person is a patient or mention anything about their visit, even when they said it first. HIPAA applies to the reply. HHS’s Office for Civil Rights settled with a California dental practice in December 2022 over review responses that disclosed patient information. A safe reply thanks the reviewer by first name, says you are glad they had a good experience, and invites them to call if anything was not right. The reputation management page has the flow and examples.
Questions and answers, posts, and messaging
The profile has a public Q&A section. If nobody from the practice answers “do you take Medicaid” or “is there parking”, a stranger might. Seed it with the five questions the front desk hears most and answer them yourself.
Posts are optional. They show on the profile for a while and then drop off. Use them for a new provider, new hours or a seasonal reminder about benefits. They do not need to be weekly.
Messaging, if turned on, has to be answered. An unanswered message count shows on your end and Google may turn the feature off if responses are slow. If nobody is assigned to it, leave it off.
The consistency check
Open the profile, the website footer, the dental society listing and two insurance directories. The practice name, street address with suite number, and phone number should match character for character. A profile that says “Ste 200” while the website says “Suite 200” is a small thing that adds up across twenty listings. Fix the ones you control and request corrections on the rest.
A monthly ten minutes
First Monday of the month: check hours and holiday hours, add two photos, read the new reviews and confirm each has a reply, answer any new Q&A, and search “dentist near me” from the parking lot to see where you land. The ranking factors article explains what you are looking at.
What Calibic does here
Local ranking (LIVE) watches how the practice appears in Maps for the main searches and scores the profile against nearby practices on rating, review pace, hours, services and offers, and it says what to fix: “complete your Google profile”, “list every service”, “ask for more recent reviews”. Review monitoring (LIVE) brings new reviews into one stream with a drafted reply (BETA), checked against Google’s rules and with no health details, which you read, edit and post yourself. Calibic never edits the profile. See local ranking and search visibility.