The 7 Most Common Mistakes Dental Practices Make With Online Reviews — and How to Fix Them
Stop Your Dental Practice Bleeding Money: Fix These Review Mistakes Now.
Your dental office is losing money right now.
I’m not talking about a few dollars here and there. I mean serious cash is walking out your door every single day. You see fewer new patients than you want.
Your appointment book has gaps. That’s not just bad luck. A huge reason is how your practice handles online reviews – or doesn’t. These aren’t tiny slip-ups. They are big, expensive mistakes that punch holes in your profits.
You’ve worked hard to build your practice, and these review mistakes are letting that money, your money, go straight to your competitors. I’m going to show you the seven biggest mistakes dental offices make with their online reviews.
I’ll tell you exactly how these mistakes are costing you patients and income, and I’ll show you how to stop it. This is about keeping the money you should be making.
Mistake 1:
You Just Plain Ignore Your Online Reviews.
This is the most basic, most costly mistake. If you act like your online reviews don’t exist, you’re telling every potential patient that you don’t give a rip about them or your business.
Picture this: someone needs a dentist.
They go online.
They find your practice. And what do they see? Maybe no reviews at all. Or a few ancient ones from years back that you never even bothered to reply to. What message does that send? It shouts, “Nobody comes here!” or “This place is out of touch and doesn’t care!”
So, they don’t call you.
They call the dentist whose online page looks busy, current, and cared for. Every single time that happens, your money just walked over to their office. You are handing your profits to them on a silver platter.
You think your good work in the chair is all that matters? That’s old thinking. Online reviews today are the new word-of-mouth, seen by hundreds, even thousands.
When you ignore a bad review, it’s like a patient yelling a complaint in your packed waiting room while you just stand there looking at the ceiling. Everybody sees it. Everybody hears the complaint. And everybody sees you doing nothing.
That silence costs you patients. It costs you cold, hard cash. And what about good reviews you ignore? That’s like a patient paying you a compliment, and you just turn your back.
It’s just plain rude.
It tells other people looking at your reviews that you don’t appreciate the folks who choose you.
Why would they want to join that club?
This isn’t about making you feel bad.
This is about your bank balance.
Every single patient who looks at your silent, dusty online review page and decides to go somewhere else is lost income.
Not just for one cleaning.
That’s years of appointments, maybe their whole family, maybe crowns or implants. It adds up to a mountain of money you’ll never see.
All because you didn’t pay attention to what folks are saying about you online. You are letting your income shrivel.
To stop this, you have to show up. You have to care. And this doesn’t mean more work for your team. Imagine a system that does more than just throw people at a blank Google review page hoping they figure it out.
This smart way actually guides them. It helps them put their thoughts about their visit into their own words, making it easy for them to leave a real, useful review.
This gets you the fresh reviews you desperately need to show you’re in business and you care, which directly protects the money you’re supposed to be making. If you keep ignoring your reviews, you’re telling your income to pack its bags and leave.
Mistake 2:
You Only Answer Bad Reviews, or You Answer All Wrong.
So, you’re not completely ignoring reviews.
Maybe you dive in when a bad one shows up.
That’s a start, but how you answer is burning a hole in your wallet just as fast as saying nothing.
Are you getting all huffy and defensive?
Writing a five-page essay about why the patient is wrong?
Or are you pasting in some stiff, fake-sounding apology that a robot could write?
If that’s what you’re doing, you’re probably making things worse. You’re scaring off more business than that one bad review ever could.
When someone looking for a dentist sees you arguing online, or using words that sound like they came from a lawyer’s letter, they don’t see someone they want to trust with their teeth.
They see a problem. And they take their business, their money, to a practice that looks friendly and professional.
And what about all those good reviews?
While you’re busy fighting with the one unhappy person, are you letting the positive comments just sit there?
A good review is like a free advertisement from a happy customer. It’s gold. When you reply to a good review with a real, human thank you, it makes that patient feel fantastic. They’ll keep coming back.
That keeps your current money safe. And it tells everyone else who reads it that you’re a place that cares about its patients.
That brings in new money. If the only time you show up in your reviews is to argue or make excuses, you look like a practice that’s always got drama.
That’s no way to protect your profits. It’s a direct path to losing them.
Think about your office manager.
Or you. How much time do you waste trying to cook up the “perfect” answer to some angry review?
That’s payroll money going down the toilet, especially if the answer still sounds bad. Every minute spent on that is a minute not spent making your office run better or helping the patients you already have. It’s a straight hit to your income.
You need a way to deal with all your reviews – the good, the bad, the okay – in a way that sounds human, happens fast, and doesn’t suck up all your team’s time.
Here’s a better idea: what if there was a way to make sure that when patients have a great experience, their positive words easily find their way to your public Google profile, building up your good name and attracting more business? And if, on the rare chance, someone had an issue, their feedback came straight to you, privately?
This approach gives your team the chance to understand and resolve any concerns directly with the patient, turning a potential problem into a chance to show you care, all before it becomes a public issue that could damage your revenue.
Every review, positive or negative, needs attention. But who has the time to craft personal replies all day long, making sure each one sounds just right?
Mercy AI handles this by creating responses that are natural and fit the situation, showing patients you’re listening and you care, without adding a mountain of work for your staff. This smart handling of all feedback helps protect your income.
Mistake 3:
Your Reviews Are Old and Dusty.
You might have a decent star rating.
You might even have some really nice reviews from a year or two ago. So you think you’re all set, right? Wrong. Dead wrong.
Online, if it’s old, it’s cold.
If your newest review is from six months ago, nine months ago, or even longer, you are actively hurting your chances of getting new patients. You are damaging your income, right now.
Why?
Because people look at the dates on those reviews. An old review page makes you look like you’re not busy anymore. It makes people wonder, “Is this place still any good?
Did something bad happen? Why isn't anyone talking about them now?”
That little bit of doubt is all it takes for them to click on your competitor who has a review from last week.
Your money just followed that click.
Search engines, like Google, notice this too. Google wants to give people the freshest, most relevant information.
A dental office with a steady flow of new reviews looks more alive, more up-to-date, and more trustworthy to Google’s system.
That means you show up higher in search results. If your reviews are ancient, you’re telling Google you’re not that important anymore.
So you slide down the list, and the guy down the street with fresh reviews gets seen first. Every spot you drop in search is like flushing potential patient money down the drain.
You’re basically invisible to people who are right now looking for a dentist, all because your reviews are covered in cobwebs.
And this isn’t just about new patients. Your current patients might not be checking your reviews every day, but the overall feeling online about your practice matters.
If they do happen to look you up and see your online buzz has died, or the only new thing is a bad review you haven’t answered, it makes them nervous.
It makes it easier for them to think about trying that other dentist their friend mentioned, the one who seems more popular online.
Keeping your current money means keeping a fresh, positive image online. Old reviews kill that.
The money you lose here is real. If your practice makes, say, $600,000 a year, and you lose even a tiny 5% of patients because your online presence feels dead, that’s $30,000 gone.
Vanished. And that’s being kind.
It costs a lot to get a new patient in the door. Losing them because your reviews are old news is like burning that money. The answer isn’t to have a “review drive” once a year and beg people.
You need a steady, natural stream.
The smart Google Review Stand is built for this.
It’s a system that helps turn your actual patient visits into current online reviews without your team having to do a thing.
No scripts, no begging, no emails.
This system ensures your review page is always fresh, always showing that you’re a busy, trusted practice that people like right now.
This constant flow of new, positive feedback is a wall around your existing revenue. Don’t let a stale review page tell the world your practice is over the hill. Keep it current, and keep your money coming in.
Mistake 4:
You Try to Get Reviews the Hard, Old Way.
So maybe you know you need reviews.
Good.
But how are you trying to get them?
Are you still putting out little paper comment cards that nobody fills out?
Or are you telling your front desk person, who’s already juggling phones and patients, to try and remember to ask every single person for a review?
Or maybe you’re sending out those email blasts with a link, and just crossing your fingers that someone actually clicks it and writes something.
These old ways aren’t just slow and painful; they are costing you a fortune in wasted staff pay, missed chances, and a tiny trickle of reviews that aren’t enough to protect your income.
Your team has important work to do – taking care of patients, running the office. Every minute they spend fumbling with a tablet to ask for a review, or awkwardly trying to talk a patient into it, or following up on those emails that never get opened, is a minute they’re not doing their real job.
That’s your payroll money being spent for almost no results. It’s a direct drain on your profits.
These old methods are also terrible at getting reviews from most of your happy patients. People are busy.
They walk out of your office, and life hits them. That good feeling they had after their appointment? It fades fast. By the time they see your email (if they even see it), they’ve moved on. So you end up with hardly any reviews.
Or worse, you only hear from the super-thrilled or the super-angry. You miss out on hearing from all those regular, happy patients whose good experiences could be building a strong wall around your reputation and your income.
This spotty, skewed feedback doesn’t show what your practice is really like, and it leaves your money vulnerable if a random bad review pops up.
The money you’re wasting here isn’t just a little.
It’s the staff time you’re paying for with nothing to show for it. It’s the lost income from new patients who pick a competitor because that competitor has lots of good, fresh reviews. And it’s the cost of not having enough good reviews to soak up the damage when a bad one hits – making every negative comment a bigger blow to your bank account.
You’re basically working harder and spending more, for less.
That’s a bad business plan. The smart move is to make it easy. The moment a patient is done with their visit, that's the golden chance to get their honest thoughts.
This isn't about hounding them later with emails or calls. It's about giving them a super simple way, right then and there in your office, to note how their experience was. This makes it much more likely you’ll capture their real, positive feelings before they forget.
This automated solution makes getting reviews a natural part of the visit, not an extra chore for your staff or a hassle for your patients.
It converts those good office visits into online reviews that protect your current income by constantly showing new, positive patient experiences. Stop throwing your money away on old methods that don’t deliver.
Get a system that makes review generation automatic and profitable.
Mistake 5:
You Let Fake Reviews Kill Your Good Name and Your Bank Account.
You see that one-star review from "Anonymous123" who says they were a patient but you have no record of them?
Or that crazy rant full of curse words and lies that has zero to do with the dental work you provided? These aren’t just annoying little things.
These are poison darts aimed straight at your practice’s reputation and your income. Doing nothing about these fake or rule-breaking reviews is a massive mistake that lets liars and cranks wreck your good name and scare away good, paying patients.
Every single day one of these bogus reviews stays up, it’s costing you money. People looking for a dentist see it, they often believe it, and they click away to someone else.
Your chair stays empty, and your competitor gets the new family you should have had. The money bleed from this is real, and it’s happening right now.
So many dentists feel like they can’t do anything. They see a review that’s clearly fake, or one that breaks Google’s own rules (like using racist language, or being totally off-topic, or someone pretending to be someone else), and they just throw up their hands.
Maybe they write an angry reply back, which usually just makes the fake review look even more important. Or they do nothing, and the poison just spreads.
This helplessness is a killer for your business. It tells potential patients that you either don’t watch your online image or you can’t control it.
Neither of those things makes anyone want to trust you with their health or their money. And both of them hurt your ability to make a profit by scaring off new people and even making your current patients wonder if they should go somewhere else.
Protecting your income means you have to fight for your online honesty.
Think about how this damage adds up.
One fake review might lose you a few patients. But what if you get hit with a bunch of them?
What if some angry ex-employee or a shady competitor decides to try and ruin you online? If you don’t have a way to spot these and fight back, your star rating can crash, and your income will crash right along with it.
All those real, good reviews you worked hard for get buried under a pile of lies. It’s like trying to fill a bucket that’s got big holes in it – no matter how much good water (your real positive reviews) you pour in, the bad stuff (the fake reviews) just keeps draining your ability to hold onto your money.
You need a watchdog.
Your online reputation is a 24/7 concern; it doesn’t clock out at 5 PM.
You need something constantly watching your Google Business Profile because a damaging review can show up at any hour and immediately start costing you patients and income.
When a review appears on your profile that is clearly against Google's own rules – perhaps it's obvious spam, from someone who was never a patient, or contains offensive language – you cannot just let it sit there and destroy your business.
Mercy AI is designed to identify these types of violations and will start the process of reporting them to Google to get them removed.
This isn't about trying to hide fair criticism; it's about making sure your review page shows a true picture of your practice, based on what real patients say.
By systematically finding and working to get rid of reviews that Google itself says are not allowed, you are directly protecting your current income from unfair hits and keeping the trust that your whole business depends on.
Don’t let fakes and rule-breakers steal your money.
Mistake 6:
You Don't See the Gold Mine of Info in Your Reviews.
Your online reviews are way more than just stars and a few sentences.
They are a direct phone line to what your patients are really thinking and feeling.
They are telling you, in their own words, what you’re doing great, what you’re messing up, and where you could easily make things better.
If you’re not really listening to all of this, and figuring out what it means, you’re basically driving your business with your eyes closed. And you are leaving a ton of money on the table. This isn’t just about spotting a complaint here or there.
It’s about finding the hidden patterns in what patients say – patterns that show you how to keep patients loyal, get more referrals, and grow your income.
When you ignore these signals, little annoyances can grow into big, expensive problems that drive patients away. And you’ll miss easy chances to make your practice even better, which means you’re missing out on money you could be making.
Think about it.
What if you see five reviews in a row that mention how amazing your hygienist, Sarah, is?
Or how quick and easy your new whitening treatment was?
That’s not just nice to hear. That’s information you can use! You can praise Sarah, make sure she knows she’s valued, and even use that specific positive feedback in your marketing.
On the other hand, what if you see a few reviews that quietly mention it’s hard to get an appointment, or the waiting room is always freezing, or the billing statements are confusing?
These are little red flags. If you don’t see them and fix them, patients will start to drift away.
They might not complain to your face, but they’ll tell their friends, and they’ll eventually find a dental office that doesn’t have those little headaches.
You are losing money not from some big disaster, but from a slow leak of patients who are tired of small, fixable problems you don’t even know about.
Many dental offices might quickly read their reviews, but they don’t have a way to see the big picture. They might react to one comment, but they miss the trend.
Are people always saying good things about your Saturday hours? Maybe you should add more. Are there quiet grumbles about how hard it is to find parking? Maybe you need to give better directions or look into options.
If you don't have a system to pull all this information together, you’re just guessing about what to improve.
You might spend money on things patients don’t even care about, while ignoring the very things that are costing you their business and their money.
Your patient feedback is like a treasure map, but you need the right tools to read it. Are patients consistently praising a particular service?
Are there repeated comments, good or bad, about specific staff members or aspects of your office?
Mercy AI carefully sifts through all your review data to uncover these important recurring themes and issues.
This gives you clear, actionable information straight from your patients, so you know exactly what’s working well and bringing in revenue, and what specific areas might be causing friction and silently costing you business.
By seeing these patterns, you can make smart changes that make patients happier, keep them coming back, and attract more of the kind of patients you want.
Stop guessing and start using the gold mine of information in your reviews to protect and grow your income.
Mistake 7:
You Think Your Office Software's "Review Thingy" is Enough to Protect Your Money.
Lots of those big dental office software programs – the ones you use for scheduling and billing – now say they have a “review feature” or some kind of add-on that’s supposed to help you get online reviews.
So you think, “Great! I’ve got that covered. No need to worry.”
That thinking is dangerous. It’s a mistake that could be costing you a lot of money. While those little features in your main office software might do something very basic, they are almost never a real, powerful solution for getting lots of good Google reviews and truly protecting your online name – which is what protects your income.
Trusting your whole online reputation, and a big chunk of your potential earnings, to a generic add-on from your practice management software is like using a kid’s toy hammer to build a house.
It’s just not the right tool for such an important job, and it’s your money that’s on the line.
Here’s the problem: those “review features” in your big software are usually just a tiny extra, something the software company threw in to make their product look more complete.
They are hardly ever designed by people who really understand Google, or what makes patients actually write reviews, or how to really manage your reputation to make you more money.
They might send out a very plain email asking for a review, often with a clunky link that’s hard to use, or they might have very low success rates.
What do you get? Maybe a tiny trickle of reviews, if you’re lucky. And you get almost no real defense if something bad happens to your online reputation.
So you’re paying for your main office software, and you think this little feature is helping you or saving you from needing something else. But really, it’s just giving you a false sense of safety while your online image – and your income – is still wide open to attack or just slowly fading away from lack of attention.
Other dentists who are using tools made just for reviews are running circles around you, getting more new patients, and keeping their income much safer.
These built-in software features usually don’t have the smarts to really guide patients to leave helpful feedback.
They often just dump someone on a review site and hope for the best.
Or worse, some of them use tricks to try and hide bad feedback in ways that Google doesn’t like, which could even get your listing penalized.
They don’t offer the important stuff like watching your Google Business Profile all day and night for new reviews, spotting fake or rule-breaking reviews so you can try to get them removed, or giving you useful reports on what your reviews are really saying. And they definitely don’t write smart, natural-sounding replies to your reviews for you.
So, while you think that little feature has you covered, your good name is actually out there unprotected, and your profits are leaking away. That “easy” feature is costing you a bundle in lost chances and risks you’re not even seeing.
Protecting your income needs a serious, focused tool. You wouldn’t use your email program to take x-rays, right?
The GetReviews.Live system, including the smart Google review stand and Mercy AI, is built for one main job: to make your online reputation on Google as strong as possible so you get more patients and protect the money you’re already making.
This system is designed from the ground up to help turn your happy patients into a steady flow of real reviews, to guide their feedback in a positive way, to help you fight back against unfair attacks, and to give you real information you can use. It’s not a tiny piece of some other giant software; it is the complete solution for making your reputation bring you more business.
Stop trying to fix a big problem with a tiny, weak tool. Putting your money into a real, dedicated system for reviews isn’t just another bill to pay; it’s a direct investment in keeping your profits safe and making them grow.
The little bit you think you’re saving by using that basic feature in your office software is probably nothing compared to the income you’re losing by not having a truly powerful review strategy working for you every single day.