Google Reviews for Dentists: How to Get More Without Breaking AHPRA Rules

Google reviews influence which practice a patient calls, and their volume, recency and rating feed into how well your listing performs in the local map pack. But dentistry is a regulated health profession, and the rules around testimonials are stricter than they are for a cafe or a plumber. Here’s how to build a steady flow of reviews while staying on the right side of the National Law and AHPRA’s advertising guidelines.

First, the compliance line you need to understand

Section 133 of the National Law prohibits advertising a regulated health service using testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or the business. That is the rule that trips practices up.

The important distinction is who controls the platform. AHPRA’s guidance has consistently treated reviews patients leave on third-party sites the practitioner does not control, such as Google, Facebook and health directories, as outside the definition of advertising by that practitioner.

Where practices get into trouble is when they take those reviews and put them into material they do control:

• Copying five-star reviews onto your home page or a treatment page
• Turning a review into a social media graphic or a paid ad
• Embedding a widget that pulls clinical praise onto your site
• Quoting a review in a brochure, newsletter or email campaign

At that point you have used a testimonial in advertising. Note too that the restriction targets comments about clinical care: the treatment, the outcome, the practitioner’s skill. Comments about non-clinical things like parking, reception staff or wait times are generally not treated as testimonials about the service.

The guidelines are updated periodically, so check the current AHPRA and Dental Board material before you finalise a review process. Our plain-English guide to AHPRA advertising guidelines for dentists covers the broader rules.

How to ask for reviews without asking for a testimonial

You are allowed to invite patients to leave feedback. The skill is in keeping the request neutral: ask for a review of their visit and leave what they write to them. Google’s content policy for Maps prohibits asking for reviews that include specific content, including naming a staff member, so do not suggest topics, a star rating or a team member to mention. Skip clinical prompts like “tell us about your treatment result” as well. Something this simple works:

“Thanks for coming in today. If you have a moment, we’d really appreciate a Google review of your visit. It genuinely helps other people in the area find us.”

A few practical rules for the request itself:

• Never offer an incentive. No discounts, no free whitening, no prize draw. This risks breaching the advertising rules on inducements, and it breaches Google’s review policy.
• Do not “gate” reviews. Screening patients first and sending the Google link only to the happy ones breaches Google’s policy and can be treated as misleading. Ask everyone.
• Never write or edit a review for a patient, and do not ask staff, family or friends to post reviews.
• Ask once. One invitation, one reminder at most.

Building a system that actually produces reviews

Practices that get reviews consistently have a process, not good intentions. Here’s a workflow that works:

1. Pick your moment. The front desk, immediately after a positive, low-stress appointment: a check-up and clean, or a completed course of treatment. Not after an extraction, and not while the patient is still numb.
2. Make the ask in person. A verbal invitation from the person the patient just dealt with converts far better than an unprompted SMS.
3. Send the link straight away. Take the short review link from your Google Business Profile (“Ask for reviews”) and SMS it while the patient is still in the practice. Most practice management systems can template this.
4. Remove the friction. The link should open the review box directly, and a QR code on the front desk helps. Our free review request kit makes both from your review link, along with SMS and email wording.
5. Give the team a script and a target. Two or three invitations per front-desk shift is a sustainable rhythm.
6. Track it monthly. New reviews per month and average rating, alongside your other marketing numbers.

Steady beats spiky. Twenty reviews in one week after four quiet months looks unnatural and is more likely to be filtered; four or five a month, every month, is a stronger signal. As for how many you need, there’s no magic number. Search your main treatment and suburb, note the review counts of the three practices in the map pack, and treat that gap as your target.

Responding to reviews (including the bad ones)

Responding is where privacy obligations bite hardest. The review is public, and so is your reply.

• Never confirm that someone is a patient, and never mention treatment, dates, costs or clinical detail, even to correct an inaccurate claim. Doing so discloses health information.
• Keep replies short and neutral. Acknowledge, express regret that their experience fell short, then move it offline: “We’d like to understand what happened. Please call the practice and ask for our practice manager.”
• Don’t argue. Future patients read the exchange, not the facts.
• Report, don’t panic. If a review breaches Google’s policies by being fake, abusive, or containing personal information, flag it through your profile. Genuine negative reviews cannot be removed, and a few make your profile look credible.
• Reply to positive reviews too, briefly, without repeating clinical praise back at the reviewer.

How reviews connect to the rest of your local SEO

Reviews are one input among several, and they work hardest when the rest of your local presence is in order: a complete profile, consistent name, address and phone details across directories, and pages that match what people search for. Our Google Business Profile optimisation checklist and our guide to local SEO for dentists cover those foundations, and the broader picture sits in our pillar guide to dental marketing in Australia.

Getting the process running in your practice

Practices with strong review profiles are rarely doing anything clever. They ask consistently, they ask in a compliant way, and they reply to everything. Write the script, put a QR code on the front desk, and make one person responsible for checking new reviews weekly.

If you’d like a hand setting up a compliant review process alongside the rest of your local search presence, have a look at what we do or get in touch.