How to get more Google reviews as a dentist
Your patients are happy. Your Google rating doesn’t show it. Here’s exactly why that happens — and the method UK practices are using to fix it, including one that went from 108 reviews in 8 years to 134 more in 17 days.
The real problem isn’t your patients
Almost every dental practice has the same gap: lots of happy patients, not nearly enough reviews to prove it. It’s not that patients won’t review you — it’s that nobody asks them at the moment they would. Happy patients leave and forget. Unhappy patients are motivated to post. So your public rating ends up shaped by your worst days, not your best. Everything below is about closing that gap.
Ask at the right moment
The window that matters is the few hours after the appointment, while the visit is fresh and the patient feels good. Ask a week later and you've lost them.
Use WhatsApp, not email or a card
Email review requests get opened by about 22% of people. WhatsApp gets opened by around 98%. Same patients, same goodwill — completely different response rate. A card on the reception desk converts almost nobody.
Make leaving a review one tap
Every extra step loses people. Happy patients should land on your Google review screen in a single tap, not hunt for your listing or log in to anything.
Ask happy patients, intercept unhappy ones
Invite everyone — but when someone flags pain, a complaint or a problem, route them to a private follow-up so your team can put it right. This is compliant (it's not review gating) and it protects your rating.
Automate it so it actually happens
Manual review-chasing always slips when the practice gets busy. Connect it to your patient system so every eligible patient is messaged automatically, from your own number, with no admin.
This is exactly what SuiteGrowth automates for UK dental practices — WhatsApp review requests, AI that routes happy vs unhappy replies, connected to Dentally in minutes.
Frequently asked
How do dentists get more Google reviews?
The single biggest lever is asking at the right moment, on the right channel. The methods that work in 2026: send a short, personal WhatsApp message shortly after the appointment (WhatsApp is opened by ~98% of people vs ~22% for email), make the review one tap away, and ask happy patients specifically. Practices that automate this from their patient system — like via Dentally — consistently collect 10–100x more reviews than relying on a card on the desk.
Why don't happy dental patients leave reviews?
Because there's no friction prompting them. A happy patient leaves the surgery feeling fine and simply forgets — there's no moment that nudges them to act. Unhappy patients, by contrast, are motivated to vent publicly. Left alone, your Google rating skews towards the few people who had a problem. The fix is to prompt every happy patient, automatically, at the moment they're feeling good about the visit.
Is it against Google's rules to ask patients for reviews?
No — asking patients for reviews is allowed and encouraged by Google. What Google prohibits is 'review gating': selectively asking only happy customers while blocking unhappy ones from reviewing. The compliant approach is to invite everyone, but route unhappy patients to a private resolution path first (so you can fix the issue) without preventing them from leaving a public review if they choose.
How fast can a dental practice realistically grow its reviews?
Faster than most expect. Deepcar Dental Care, a UK practice, collected 108 reviews over 8 years the traditional way — then added 134 more in just 17 days after automating WhatsApp review requests with SuiteGrowth. The bottleneck was never the patients' willingness; it was never asking them at the right time.
Your next 100 five-star reviews
are waiting.
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