You have three hundred reviews at 4.8. The practice a mile away has forty, and they appear above you in the map every time.
Review count is one input among several. Four other things are usually doing the work, and three of them you can change this month.
How close is the searcher standing?
Distance is the input nobody can argue with, and Google says so on its own Business Profile help pages.
Somebody searching “dentist near me” from an office park two blocks from that practice will see it first. You could have a thousand reviews and lose that particular search.
This is why owners see themselves ranking first from the front desk and nowhere from a patient’s house. Check from a few addresses across your area before deciding anything is wrong.
Does your profile say everything you do?
Here is where most practices lose ground without knowing.
Your primary category is one line, and it decides which searches you are eligible for. A practice set to “Dentist” competes for general searches. A practice that also offers implants and never lists them appears for none of those searches.
Go through the services list in your profile and add every procedure you sell, with the words patients use. “Tooth implant” and “dental implant” are typed by different people.
Are your reviews recent?
Three hundred reviews with the newest one from fourteen months ago reads differently to a person and to a machine.
A practice adding four a month looks like a busy office. A practice with a large pile from 2023 looks like it was busy once.
The habit is what wins. Ask on the day, every day, and forty new reviews a year beats a stack that has stopped growing.
Does your website back the profile up?
The map listing and the website work together. Google checks whether the page behind the profile agrees with it.
A practice whose website has one page called “Services” listing fourteen procedures gives Google nothing to match against an implant search. A practice with a page for each of its five main procedures gives it five.
You do not need a page for everything. You need one for each procedure you want more of.
What about the star rating?
4.8 against 4.9 changes little in ranking. It changes plenty in whether somebody calls.
What patients read is the recent ones and the replies. A 4.6 with thoughtful answers under the two complaints reads better than a 4.9 where nobody has ever replied to anything.
Answer them all, briefly, in your own words.
What is worth doing first?
In this order, because it goes cheapest to most expensive.
Fix the profile categories and services this week, because it costs an hour. Restart the review habit next, because it costs nothing but a routine at the front desk.
Then build the procedure pages. That part takes weeks of work and pays for years.
One thing worth checking before any of it
Search the five procedures you want more of, from a patient’s neighbourhood instead of your office. Write down where you appear.
Most practices discover they are first for their own name, first for “dentist”, and nowhere for the four treatments that pay the bills. That gap is the whole plan.
If you want somebody to close it, that is what our dental marketing work covers. The profile, the review habit and the pages behind each procedure.
Want us to check the five searches with you? Book a call and we will do it on screen.