Somebody gave them your name. The site decides what happens next.
The page is not competing for a stranger. It is confirming what a friend already said, to somebody who is checking.
The short answer
People do not shop for a dentist the way they shop for a restaurant. They ask somebody they trust, get a name, and then look that name up.
So the website is not there to win an argument. It is there to survive being checked.
What the research actually found
A study of 466 patients across 3 German cities, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, asked how they had become aware of their dentist. 65.6% said a recommendation. 7.3% said the internet.
That is one country and the fieldwork was done in 2012 and 2013, so treat it as a shape rather than a measurement of Durres today. The shape is the useful part, and it has not reversed anywhere it has been asked since.
Being checked is a different job from being found
Somebody who was given your name types it directly. They are looking for an address, a photograph of the place, the hours, and some sign that a real person works there.
If nothing comes up, the recommendation quietly weakens. Not because they doubt their friend, but because a clinic with no trace looks like one that might have closed.
What to put on the page, in order
The name of the dentist and a photograph of them. The address with a map. The hours. What you actually treat, in the words a patient would use rather than the clinical ones.
Prices are a decision rather than an obligation, and whichever you choose, saying nothing at all is the option that costs you the nervous patient.
Where search still earns its keep
Two cases. The emergency, where somebody in pain searches and takes whoever can see them. And the newcomer who knows nobody in the city yet, which in a town with this much movement is not a small group.
Both are found on the map rather than through the site, which makes the listing the cheaper half of this job.
Questions worth asking
Most of my patients arrive recommended. Does this change that?
It supports it. Somebody given your name still looks you up before they ring, and what they find decides whether they do. Half of this work is for people who already heard about you.
What am I allowed to say?
Describe what you do, who does it and what it involves. Do not promise outcomes. The rules vary and the careful version also reads as the more competent one, so this costs you nothing.
Do I need online appointment booking?
Usually not at first. A clear number, real hours and a form that reaches a person covers most of it. Booking systems fail in clinics where the diary is really kept at the desk.
Do reviews matter for a clinic?
More than in most trades, because the decision is an anxious one. Ask at the moment somebody says they are pleased. Reply to the bad ones calmly and in public, because the reply is read by the next person rather than by the complainer.
What decides the price?
How many treatments you describe, how many people you introduce, and how many languages. A single practice with six treatments is a small job.
Search your own clinic the way a patient would, with the name a friend would have given them, and tell us what you found. Get a free audit.
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