Sixty-five point six percent. That is the share of dental practices that named word of mouth and patient referrals as their top source of new patients in MouthWatch’s 2026 survey of 448 practices. A year earlier, in the same survey, the figure was 77.5%. Referrals did not stop working. Something else started working well enough to take their place, and that something is Google.
The dental marketing statistics below explain that shift. They show where patients start their search, how much weight reviews carry, how fast AI is entering the picture and what practices are and are not doing about it. Each figure names its source. Where a survey covers healthcare in general rather than dental patients alone, we say so, because a number is only useful if you know what it measures.
Where patients start: search and maps
Tebra’s 2025 survey of 3,964 US adults found that 56% started their search for a healthcare provider on Google. That number covers providers of all kinds, but dental search follows the same pattern, and for a local service with frequent new-patient demand, it may be stronger.
In the UK, Whito’s May 2026 dental marketing report found that 72% of patients search online before choosing a dentist, and that 85% of dental searches happen on mobile devices. It also estimated that Google search drives 35% of new-patient acquisition for UK practices, ahead of referrals at 30%.
MouthWatch’s 2026 practice survey adds the practice’s side of the story. Google Business Profile has become the second-leading new-patient channel after referrals, yet 75% of practices rated their own online presence as “decent” or worse, and 6.5% said they had minimal or no online presence at all.
Put those together and you get a plain picture. Patients look first on a phone, usually on Google, often on the map. Most practices know their presence there is weak.
How much reviews matter
Reviews are where patients make up their minds, and the numbers here are consistent across surveys.
Tebra found that 79% of adults read reviews before choosing a provider. Rater8’s 2025 “How Patients Choose Their Doctors” report, based on more than 1,000 US patients, found 84% check online reviews before booking care, unchanged between December 2024 and June 2025. More than half (51%) read at least six reviews before deciding. Press Ganey put the average at 4.7 reviews.
Reviews carry enough weight to cancel appointments. Rater8 found that 40% of patients had changed their care plans, either canceling an appointment or deciding not to book, because of negative online feedback. And 61% said they trusted online reviews more than personal recommendations from friends or family.
Even referrals get checked. Press Ganey found that 83.5% of respondents at least occasionally used reviews to validate a referral. A happy patient may send a friend your way, but the friend will still read your reviews before calling.
For local businesses in general, BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 97% of consumers read reviews, and that 41% read them every time they look for a business, up from 29% in 2025.
The review gap practices can close
Here is the statistic that should change how a practice operates. Rater8 found that 57% of patients rarely or never leave reviews for their own providers. Patients read reviews all the time and seldom write them.
We call this the Trust Gap: the distance between how heavily patients rely on reviews and how few they leave. A practice that closes it, even a little, gains an outsized advantage, because most competitors leave the gap wide open. If 4.7 reviews is what an average patient reads, a practice with 30 recent, detailed reviews looks very different from one with eight reviews from three years ago, even if the care is identical.
Closing the gap does not require tricks, and it should never involve buying or faking reviews. Fake reviews break Google’s policies and the FTC’s rule on fake reviews. What works is asking at the right moment: a short text after a good appointment with a direct link, a front-desk team that mentions it when a patient says something kind and a habit of replying to every review, positive or negative, without sharing any patient information. Privacy rules apply to replies too. Never confirm in a public response that a reviewer is your patient or discuss their care.
A practice that asks every satisfied patient will outpace one that waits for reviews to arrive on their own.
AI is entering the search
The newest dental marketing statistics are about AI, and they are moving fast.
Research reported by TechTarget found that 47% of patients had used AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini to find a healthcare provider, up from 31% just nine months earlier. More than a third (36%) said AI influenced which provider they ultimately chose. Rater8’s 2025 survey found 31% of patients used generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews to research or compare providers, and that 73% had adopted some new behavior or tool to research providers, including voice assistants and social media.
Practices are not keeping up. MouthWatch found that only 16% of practices were actively adapting their marketing for AI-driven search.
That gap matters because AI assistants do not browse the way people do. They summarize what they find in reviews, on the practice website, in local directories and in any press or community coverage. A practice with clear, consistent information about its services, location, insurance and hours, plus plenty of recent reviews and some mentions in local news or health sites, is much easier for an AI tool to recommend than one with a thin website and a handful of old reviews.
Cost and access shape the decision
Marketing does not operate in a vacuum. The ADA Health Policy Institute reported that 13% of people faced cost barriers to dental care in 2023, compared with 4% to 5% for other health services. Cost is a bigger obstacle in dentistry than in most of healthcare.
That has a direct marketing implication. Patients want to know before they call whether you take their insurance, whether you offer payment plans and roughly what common treatments cost. Practices that answer those questions clearly on their website and Google profile remove a reason to look elsewhere. Practices that hide them invite patients to choose a competitor whose information is easier to find.
Read every statistic with its source in mind
Almost every dental marketing statistic you will see comes from a company that sells something to dental practices. Tebra sells practice management software. Press Ganey and rater8 sell patient experience and reputation tools. MouthWatch sells patient communication and teledentistry products. BrightLocal sells local search software. That does not make their data wrong. These are large surveys with published methods, and their findings line up with one another. It does mean you should read each one knowing who paid for it.
It also means you should be wary of the statistics that circulate without a source. Lists of “dental marketing statistics” often include tidy figures, such as a fixed percentage boost in calls from a certain star rating, that trace back to no survey at all. If you cannot find the original study, its sample size and its date, do not build a budget on it and do not repeat it on your website.
A good rule is to use three kinds of evidence together. Industry surveys show broad patient behavior. Your own data, from your phone system, booking software and Google Business Profile insights, shows what is happening at your practice. Public research from the ADA Health Policy Institute shows the economic backdrop. When all three point the same way, you can act with confidence.
Benchmark your own practice against the numbers
Industry dental marketing statistics are only useful if you compare them with what is happening at your own practice. You can do that in an afternoon with tools you already have.
Start with your Google Business Profile insights. Look at how many people found your profile through searches for your practice name versus searches for services such as “dentist near me” or “emergency dentist.” A high share of name searches means patients who already know you are finding you. A low share of service searches means new patients may not be finding you at all.
Next, count your reviews from the last 90 days and your average rating over that period, not your all-time rating. Patients weigh recent reviews more, and a strong all-time average can hide a recent decline. Compare your count with the three practices closest to you on the map.
Then look at your new-patient intake form. If it asks how patients heard about you, total the answers for the last six months. If it does not ask, add the question this week. Many practices discover that patients who say “a friend told me” also searched for the practice on Google before calling, which is exactly what Press Ganey’s referral data suggests.
Last, ask an AI assistant about your area. Type “Who is a good family dentist in [your neighborhood]?” into ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, and see whether your practice appears and how it is described. Repeat the check every quarter. Given how fast patient use of AI is growing, this is one of the dental marketing statistics you can measure for yourself.
What to do with these dental marketing statistics
Treat your Google Business Profile as your front door. It is the second-largest source of new patients in MouthWatch’s data, and most practices admit theirs is not good enough. Complete every field, add real photos, list services and insurance and keep hours current.
Build a steady flow of reviews by asking every satisfied patient, every week. Reply to all of them in a professional tone that protects patient privacy.
Make your website answer the questions patients ask: insurance, cost, availability, location and what a first visit is like. Those same answers are what AI assistants pull into their summaries.
Earn some coverage beyond your own channels. A feature in a local paper, a quote in a health publication or a profile on a community site gives search engines and AI tools an independent source that confirms you are who you say you are.
Review these numbers once a year. Patient behavior is shifting fast, especially around AI, and the practices that track the change early will spend less to win each new patient than those that wait.
Referrals will keep mattering. But the patient your best referrer sends you is going to search for you first. Make sure what they find gives them a reason to book.