A one-page guide for dental practices
How many Google reviews does your practice need?
It depends on how many practices compete in your town. We searched 1,489 UK towns, cities and suburbs on 13 September 2026 and recorded every practice Google put on the map. Here is the number for a town your size, how to find your own, and what else moves the map.
Free, with no email. Or start your free month: no card, four fields, under a minute.
Official records built in
- Care Quality Commissioninspections and registrations, in England
- NHS Business Services AuthorityNHS contract values, in England
- Office for National Statisticswho lives nearby, in England and Wales
- Companies Housewho owns each practice, across the UK
- OHID Fingertipschildren's teeth, in England
- Indices of Deprivationhow well off the area is, in England
- Planning Datanew homes planned, in England
Rankings, listings and review counts are Google's search results and listings, collected by DataForSEO. Practice Radar is independent and is not endorsed by any of these organisations. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
The number for a town your size
When a patient searches "dentist" and your town, Google shows a map with three practices before any website. These are the review counts held by the practices in those three places, split by how many practices compete in the town.
The national median is 113. It is not a target for anybody, because no practice competes in a national average.
Your star rating matters less than you would think. The median rating on the map is 4.8, and 72% of practices there sit at 4.6 or better, so ratings separate almost nobody. Review counts are what vary.
Source: Practice Radar, UK Dental Search Index, 2,493 practices holding a map place across 1,489 UK places, 13 September 2026, corrected 24 October 2026.
How to count the practices competing in your town
- On your phone, search Google for "dentist" and your town's name.
- Scroll the first page of ordinary results, below the map.
- Count the dental practices, each one once, even if it appears twice.
- Leave out directories, the NHS website, the CQC, Facebook and other social media.
- Match your count to a row in the table above.
Most towns are smaller than people think. The median UK place has five practices ranking for its own name.
Then find your real target. Write down the review counts of the three practices on the map. That number decides whether you are close, not the table.
They have a little more than you
If they have 240 and you have 190, you are a steady year of asking away.
They have far more than you
If they have 900, reviews are not your fastest lever. Put the effort into the other things below first.
What else moves the map
Google weighs three things, and you can only move two of them.
- Distance. How close you are to the person searching. You cannot move the building, which is why you can be first outside your door and nowhere three miles away.
- Relevance. Whether your Google listing and website say clearly, in a patient's words, what you do and where. A practice offering implants with no page about implants is leaving it to Google to guess.
- Prominence. Reviews, and mentions and links from elsewhere on the web. This moves slowly.
We found practices rated 2 stars or lower holding a map place. If a practice rated below you is above you, reviews are not what separates you. Distance or relevance is.
What to do this month
- Finish your Google listing. Categories, every service, opening hours including bank holidays, and real photographs.
- Give each treatment its own page. One page listing twelve treatments ranks for none of them.
- Make your details match everywhere. Name, address and phone number the same on every listing. Old details from a move or a rebrand quietly contradict the new ones.
- Ask for reviews every week. A few a week look better to Google than forty in a fortnight.
- Answer the questions patients ask. Look at the "People also ask" box on your main searches. If a rival's page answers them and yours does not, they are collecting searches you never see.
Timing. Across four years of Google's search figures, January is the busiest month for dental searching, and December the quietest. Reviews asked for now are on your listing before January.
Practice Radar in 66 seconds.
Who wins Google in your town, where you rank, the people your Google Maps ranking reaches, CQC and NHS for every practice nearby, reviews, listings and what ChatGPT says about you. Shown on Kingsmere, a made-up town.
Which dental practices are beating you on Google, and for which searches?
The guide gives you a number. Practice Radar gives you your town. Tell it where you are and it maps every practice competing with yours, usually the same day.
- Who is winning which search. Every search that matters in your town, who holds the three map places for each, and how many reviews each practice has. Rankings re-checked every week.
- Where you are not found. Your position across the map. In England and Wales it is counted by the people who live in each part of town rather than by map points, so a field and a housing estate do not count the same.
- Your area, on the record. For practices in England: CQC inspections, NHS contract values and who owns each practice near you.
- Then it does the work. On a paid Growth plan it applies the changes you approve: page changes on your website, replies posted to your Google listing, wasted search terms added to your ads as negatives, and your practice listed on 30 UK and dental directories and kept in step on Google, Facebook, Bing and Apple Maps. Nothing happens without your approval, and most website and ad changes go back from the same screen.
Benchmark your practice against local competitors, free for 30 days, no card required. Nothing starts when the month ends unless you choose a plan.
Rather look first? Open the live demo, no login.
Built by a practice owner. Jack Henty spent half a decade in corporate marketing, then went into dentistry: he co-owns Bollington Dental Practice in Cheshire with his fiancée, who practises there. On our own practice, page-one keywords went from 6 in May to 194 in September.
Asked before starting.
What does the free month include?
Growth for 30 days: your market map, weekly rankings and the Monday email, the review race, the rank grid, the searches rivals win, the CQC and NHS view, and your own Google accounts if you connect them. It shows every change it would make. Applying them to your website, ads and Google listing starts when you choose a plan.
Do I need a card?
No. There is no card to take, so nothing can start by itself. At day thirty it is your decision.
What does it cost afterwards?
Insight is £249 a month for the map, rankings and weekly email. Growth is £549 a month, the plan our own practice runs on, adding the monthly brief, your Google accounts and the changes applied for you.
Where does the data come from?
Public search results, business listings and review counts, gathered the way a patient's search would see them, plus the official CQC, NHS and Companies House registers. It only reads your own Google accounts if you connect them. It holds no patient records. The only personal data about the public it touches is public Google reviews, as the privacy notice explains.
How long does it take to set up?
Four fields, under a minute, and the map starts building the moment you confirm your email if your practice matches its CQC registration, otherwise within one working day, usually the same day.
We already have a marketing agency.
Keep them. Nothing goes live without someone approving it, and your agency can see the same map and the same queue.