Dental competitor analysis for practice owners
Dental competitor analysis for practice owners: rivals' Google Ads for implants and aligners, new patient offers, fee pages, reviews, and a monthly routine.
Dental competitor analysis is really two jobs. For checkups and hygiene, you compete with the practices nearest your patients that take the same insurance. For implants, clear aligners, veneers and emergencies, you compete with whoever wins the search, which can be a practice across the city. Watch each set differently.
For the general local checks every practice should run (map pack, Google Business Profile, location pages), use our guide to competitor monitoring for local businesses. This page covers what is specific to dentistry.
Two competitive sets, not one
Say you run a three-chair practice in Columbus with four rivals within five miles. Those four are your routine care set. Patients choose between them on location, insurance, opening hours and reviews.
Your treatment set looks different. For implants it might be a dedicated implant centre twenty miles away that advertises across the whole metro. For aligners it might be an orthodontist and a large group practice running Instagram ads.
Write both lists down. One implant case is worth more than years of checkups, and the rival who takes those patients is often one you never see at local meetings.
Where the treatment money goes: paid search
Patients researching implants or aligners search, compare and enquire online, often from a phone. That makes Google Ads the most revealing place to watch.
Search like a patient. On your phone, search "dental implants [your city]", "emergency dentist near me" and "Invisalign cost" in the morning, in the evening and on a Saturday. Note who appears each time. Whoever shows for emergencies at 9pm on a weekend has decided out-of-hours patients are worth paying for.
Read their ads. Look each rival up in the Google Ads Transparency Center. Note the headline offer, the landing page and whether they run separate ads per treatment. A practice with dedicated landing pages for implants, aligners and emergencies is running a serious campaign.
Check what clicks cost. Keyword Planner, free inside a Google Ads account, shows the top-of-page bid range for each term in your area. Compare implant terms with "dentist near me". The difference explains where rivals concentrate their budget.
Look at the Local Services Ads block. In the US, dentists can run Local Services Ads, which charge per lead rather than per click. Google ranks them on bid, responsiveness and profile quality, which includes rating and number of reviews. So a rival's review growth matters here too, not just in the map pack.
If a rival bids on your practice name, our guide to bidding on competitor keywords covers what Google allows and whether to respond. Before copying a rival's whitening or veneer ads, read the Meta and Google health ad policies summarised in our guide for clinics and med spas.
Offers and fees: read their new patient page
Dental offers follow a few conventions. Check each rival's site for these monthly.
| Offer type | What it usually looks like | What a change tells you |
|---|---|---|
| New patient special | Fixed price for exam, X-rays and cleaning | A lower price means they want volume for the hygiene book |
| Free consultation | For implants, aligners or veneers | They are chasing treatment cases |
| Membership plan | Annual fee for preventive care plus a discount | They are targeting uninsured patients |
| Financing | "From $X a month" next to implant pages | They are competing on affordability, not price |
| Insurance list | In-network carriers named on the site | A carrier disappearing sends patients shopping |
Fee pages are rare and valuable. Many practices do not publish implant or aligner fees. When a rival starts showing a "from" price, screenshot it, and screenshot it again next month.
Watch the end of the benefits year. For patients whose dental benefits reset on 1 January, unused benefits expire in December. Expect "use your benefits before they expire" emails, ads and posts from rivals from October onwards, and plan yours before theirs start.
Reviews: read them for the clinician
Dental reviews name people. "Dr Patel was so gentle", "the hygienist explained everything". That makes them a guide to a rival's staffing.
New names mean new capacity. An associate dentist collecting named reviews within weeks of joining tells you the practice is growing and has chairs to fill.
Fear words are positioning. Count reviews mentioning "anxious", "nervous", "sedation" or "painless". A rival building a reputation for nervous patients is staking out a segment, and the review text shows you how well it is working.
Do not copy careless replies. Some practices answer bad reviews by discussing the patient's treatment. In December 2022 the HHS Office for Civil Rights settled with a California dental practice for $23,000 over review responses that disclosed patient information. Reply in general terms and take the detail offline.
Zocdoc, Healthgrades and Yelp also carry dental reviews. Check them by hand once a month if your patients use them.
What not to copy: specialist claims
When a rival advertises as an "implant specialist", do not assume you can say the same. The ADA's Code of Professional Conduct says a dentist may announce as a specialist only in a specialty recognised by the National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards, and only after meeting its education requirements. General dentists can list the services they offer without implying specialisation.
The binding rules are set by your state dental board and vary by state. This is a summary, not legal advice. A competitor's ad is not evidence that a claim is allowed.
A monthly dental competitor analysis routine
Dentistry moves more slowly than restaurants or retail. An hour a month covers it, with a quick ad check weekly in your busiest season.
| When | What to check | Where | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | Who shows for implant, aligner and emergency searches | Your phone, three times of day | 15 min |
| Monthly | Each rival's live ads and landing pages | Ads Transparency Center, Meta Ad Library | 15 min |
| Monthly | New patient special, membership, financing, insurance list | Their website | 15 min |
| Monthly | Rating, review count, named clinicians, fear words | Google, Zocdoc, Healthgrades | 15 min |
| Each October | Year-end benefits campaigns | Ads, email, Instagram | 10 min |
Doing it with Figo
Ours, so judge accordingly. Figo checks each rival weekly and covers the ads (Google, Meta and TikTok), new and changed pages on their site such as a new implant page or a changed offers page, their Google rating and review count, and their Instagram and Facebook posts.
It does not read Zocdoc, Healthgrades or Yelp, and its rankings are country-level Google positions, not a map pack grid of your neighbourhood. For a single practice with four nearby rivals, the monthly hour above is enough. Figo starts at $49 a month for three competitors, and it suits group practices and agencies running several practices more than it suits a single owner with a free Friday afternoon.
Questions people ask
Should a dental practice publish its fees?
For routine care and new patient offers, publishing usually helps because patients compare. For implants and aligners, a starting price or a monthly figure gets more enquiries than silence, but check what your state board says about how fee claims must be qualified.
Can I see how much a competing dentist spends on Google Ads?
No. The Ads Transparency Center shows their ads, not spend. Keyword Planner shows what clicks on implant and emergency terms cost in your area, which tells you what a rival who holds the top spot all day must be paying.
How many practices should I track?
Three to five. The two or three nearest practices that take the same insurance, plus whoever dominates the ads for your most valuable treatment, even if they are across town.
How often do dental competitors change their offers?
There is no fixed rhythm. Quiet months and the run-up to the end of the benefits year are the obvious times to watch, and a monthly check catches almost everything.
See it on your own competitors
Figo checks their ads, pages, rankings and reviews every week, then tells you what to do in plain words. Set up in two minutes.
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