Your patients are already talking about you on Google, Yelp, Healthgrades, Zocdoc, and Vitals. But if someone visits your website right now, can they see any of it?
For most dental practices, the answer is no. The website has stock photos, a list of services, maybe a "Patient Testimonials" page with three quotes from 2021. Meanwhile, you've got 80+ genuine reviews scattered across five platforms that nobody visiting your site ever sees.
This guide walks through why that gap matters, what your options are for fixing it, and how to pick the right approach for your practice.
Why Reviews on Your Website Actually Matter
You might think: "My reviews are on Google. Patients can find them." And that's true — but it misses what happens next.
Here's the typical patient journey: they Google "dentist near me," scan the star ratings in the map results, read a few reviews, then click through to your website. At that point, they're deciding whether to call. If your site looks like a brochure with no real patient voices, a lot of them bounce back to Google and pick someone else.
The numbers back this up. According to BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey, 31% of consumers will only use a business rated 4.5 stars or above, and 47% won't consider one with fewer than 20 reviews. And here's the part that surprises most practice owners: 74% of consumers seek reviews from the last three months, with 32% only looking at the past two weeks.
That testimonials page you set up in 2021? Most patients scroll right past it.
Displaying recent, real reviews on your website bridges the trust gap between "I saw their Google rating" and "I'm picking up the phone." Practices that add visible social proof to their sites consistently report higher booking rates. For a practice getting 30 website visitors a day, even a small conversion bump means several extra new patients per month — each worth thousands in lifetime value.
The multi-platform problem
Here's what most practices overlook: your patients aren't all on Google. Yes, Google is dominant — about 71% of consumers use it. But significant numbers also check Yelp (44%), Facebook (45%), and healthcare-specific platforms like Healthgrades (30M+ monthly visitors) and Zocdoc (6M+ monthly visitors).
Consumers check an average of six review sites when evaluating a business, according to BrightLocal's 2026 survey. A patient who found you on Healthgrades wants to see Healthgrades reviews on your site — not just Google reviews from a platform they didn't use. The ideal setup pulls reviews from everywhere your patients talk about you and shows them in one place.
A Quick Note on HIPAA (It's Simpler Than You Think)
HIPAA comes up every time dentists discuss reviews online, and the fear around it is often worse than the reality. Here's the short version.
Patients can say whatever they want. HIPAA applies to your practice, not to patients. When a patient posts a review on Google mentioning their cleaning or root canal, that's their choice. They're free to share their own experience.
The risk is in how you respond. The real HIPAA problems happen when practices respond to reviews with patient-specific details — confirming someone is a patient, mentioning their treatment, referencing dates or insurance. A few dental practices have faced fines of $10,000–$50,000 for exactly this. The fix is simple: keep responses generic. "Thank you for your feedback. We take all concerns seriously — please contact our office directly so we can help." Boring, but safe.
Displaying publicly posted reviews is different from publishing testimonials. If you manually copy a patient's words and put them on your website as a testimonial, that's your practice using patient information for marketing — which has stricter requirements. But when a widget automatically pulls reviews that patients already posted publicly on Google or Yelp, the risk profile is fundamentally different. The patient chose to share that information on a public platform.
Bottom line: use generic response templates, don't copy-paste reviews manually, and let a widget handle the display. That's it. You don't need to lose sleep over this.
For the full breakdown — including real enforcement cases, safe response templates, and a compliance checklist — read our HIPAA and dental reviews compliance guide.
Five Ways to Display Reviews on Your Dental Website
There's a wide range of approaches, from free to enterprise. Here's an honest comparison.
| Method | Cost | Multi-Platform | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual testimonials | Free (staff time) | No | Practices with <10 reviews |
| Google Places API | Free | Google only (max 5) | Developer-led practices |
| Free widgets (Elfsight, etc.) | $0–$72/mo | Single platform | Quick Google-only display |
| Enterprise (Birdeye, Podium) | $250–$700+/mo | Yes | Multi-location groups |
| Multi-platform widgets | $30–$80/mo | Yes (5+ platforms) | Single-location practices |
Method 1: Manual testimonials (free, but problematic)
Copy positive reviews, paste them on a testimonials page. It's the most common approach and the worst one. The quotes go stale within months. An all-5-star page looks curated and untrustworthy. And you lose the Google/Yelp branding that makes reviews feel credible — a quote on your site doesn't carry the same weight as a review clearly pulled from Google.
Best for: Practices just getting started with fewer than 10 total reviews.
Method 2: Google's Places API (free, but limited)
Google's Places API lets you pull reviews programmatically, but it returns a maximum of five reviews — a hard cap that hasn't changed since 2015. You can't control which five appear. It's Google-only, so no Yelp or Healthgrades. And it requires developer skills to set up.
Best for: Developer-led practices that only care about Google reviews.
Method 3: Free single-platform widgets
Tools like Elfsight offer free tiers that embed Google reviews with a simple code snippet. Easy setup, decent appearance. The catch: free tiers show very few reviews with the provider's branding, and you're limited to one platform. If you want Google AND Yelp, you need separate widgets (and separate paid plans).
Best for: Practices that only need Google reviews displayed quickly.
Method 4: Enterprise platforms ($250–$700+/month)
Birdeye, Podium, Weave, PatientPop — these are full-suite tools that bundle review display with SMS campaigns, payment processing, VoIP phones, AI assistants, and more. They're powerful. They're also massive overkill for most single-location practices that just want to show reviews on their website.
The pricing reflects the feature bloat: $300–$700/month with annual contracts and setup fees. Forum complaints about these tools follow a pattern — practices sign up for a comprehensive suite, use maybe 10% of the features, and feel trapped by the contract. One common frustration: PatientPop retains ownership of your website, so canceling means rebuilding your entire site from scratch.
Best for: Multi-location dental groups needing a full communication suite.
Method 5: Multi-platform dental review widgets ($30–$80/month)
This is the category we operate in with SmileWidget, so take our perspective with a grain of salt — but we built in this space because we kept seeing the same gap. Practices wanted to show reviews from Google, Yelp, Healthgrades, Zocdoc, and Vitals on their website without paying enterprise prices or dealing with enterprise complexity.
A multi-platform widget aggregates reviews from all your platforms into one embed. Setup is typically a single code snippet. Reviews sync automatically. You get recent, authentic social proof from multiple sources without manual maintenance.
The tradeoff: these tools focus on display, not on review solicitation or response management. If you need a tool that sends SMS review requests and manages responses across platforms, you're looking at a different category. But if your main goal is "show my reviews on my website," this is the sweet spot.
Best for: Single-location practices with reviews on multiple platforms who want a simple, affordable solution.
Setting It Up: The Practical Checklist
Whatever method you choose, a few steps make the process smoother.
Step 1: Know where you stand. Before installing anything, search for your practice on each major platform. Note your ratings and review counts. You might be surprised — many practices have more Healthgrades reviews than they realize.
Step 2: Pick the right pages for your widget. Your homepage is the obvious choice, but don't stop there. Your "About" page, individual doctor pages, and service-specific pages (implants, cosmetic dentistry) all benefit from review display. Patients landing on a specific service page are often closer to booking — showing them relevant reviews at that moment can be the final push.
Step 3: Keep response templates ready. Whether or not you use a widget, you'll want a handful of generic, safe review response templates. One for positive reviews ("Thank you for sharing your experience..."), one for negative ("We appreciate your feedback and take all concerns seriously..."), one for reviews that mention specific treatment details ("We value your feedback. To protect your privacy, we'd love to continue this conversation directly — please call us at..."). Train your front desk team on these.
Step 4: Ask for reviews consistently. You can't display what doesn't exist. The simplest approach: hand patients a small card at checkout with a QR code linking to your Google Business Profile. Even asking five patients a day generates 15–20+ new reviews per month, which keeps your widget fresh and your ratings current.
Common Mistakes Dental Practices Make with Review Display
Showing only 5-star reviews. Consumers are smart. An all-perfect testimonials page feels fake. Displaying an unfiltered feed — including the occasional 4-star or 3-star review — actually builds more trust. It signals that the reviews are real.
Ignoring platforms beyond Google. If a patient found you through Healthgrades and your site only shows Google reviews, you've missed an opportunity to validate their research. Multi-platform display meets patients where they already are.
Letting reviews go stale. If your newest displayed review is from six months ago, patients wonder what changed. Automated widgets solve this entirely — no manual updates needed.
Responding to negative reviews with details. This is where practices actually get into trouble. When someone leaves a bad review, the instinct is to explain what happened. Resist it. Every specific detail you share — names, dates, treatments, insurance — is a risk. Take it offline with a generic response and a phone number. We cover safe response templates in our HIPAA compliance guide.
The ROI Sanity Check
The average cost to acquire a new dental patient through traditional marketing (Google Ads, direct mail) runs $150–$300. The average lifetime value of a dental patient is $5,000–$10,000 for a general practice, depending on retention and referrals.
If showing reviews on your website converts just one additional visitor into a patient each month, you're looking at thousands in lifetime value against $30–80 in monthly widget cost. That's a return most marketing channels can't match — and unlike paid ads, it compounds over time as your review count grows.
Enterprise tools need to generate significantly more patients to justify their $300–$700/month cost. For most single-location practices, the math simply doesn't work at that price point.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does embedding reviews on my website help with SEO?
Yes and no. Reviews add fresh, keyword-rich content to your pages, which benefits general SEO signals. However, Google explicitly prevents local businesses from getting star-rating rich snippets from self-hosted reviews — your star ratings will still appear in Google's Local Pack from your Business Profile, but embedding reviews on your own site won't generate additional star snippets in organic search. The primary value is conversion, not rankings.
How many reviews does a dental practice need?
There's no magic number, but practices with fewer than 20 reviews lose significant potential inquiries. Most dental marketing professionals recommend at least 50 Google reviews as a credibility baseline, with 3–5 new reviews per week to maintain freshness. Remember: review recency matters as much as review count.
Can I pay patients to leave reviews?
You can ask patients to leave reviews (the ADA recommends it), but you cannot offer incentives conditional on a positive review. Offering a small thank-you for leaving any review — positive or negative — is generally acceptable if disclosed, though rules vary by state. Never incentivize specifically positive reviews.
What's the cheapest alternative to Podium for dental practices?
Podium starts at $399/month with features most single-location practices don't need. If your primary goal is displaying reviews on your website, multi-platform review widgets start at $30–$80/month with no annual contracts.
Is it a HIPAA violation to put Google reviews on my dental website?
The short answer: displaying reviews that patients voluntarily posted on public platforms carries significantly lower risk than manually republishing patient testimonials. The key is how the reviews get on your site and how you respond to them. See our full HIPAA compliance guide for the detailed breakdown.
Getting Started
The best time to put reviews on your website was when you got your first 20 reviews. The second best time is now.
Start by auditing your current reviews across platforms. Pick a display method that matches your needs and budget. Set up a simple system for asking patients to leave reviews. And keep your review responses generic and safe.
Your patients are already saying great things about you. Make sure the next person visiting your website gets to hear them.