Methodology
How we rank dentists
Re-scored weeklyUpdated 115,770 clinics scored5,168 cities0 paid placements in any ranking
Every clinic on DentistsRanked gets one DR Score from 0 to 100, built from 6 weighted factors. Ranks on every list come from that score and nothing else. Clinics can’t pay to move up.
The DR Score in one line
Each factor is scored from 0 to 1, multiplied by its weight, and summed to a score out of 100.
- 45%Reputation
- 15%Review volume
- 10%Recency
- 15%Access
- 10%Services
- 5%Profile completeness
DR Score = 45 × reputation + 15 × review volume + 10 × recency + 15 × access + 10 × services + 5 × profile completeness.
The six factors
What each factor measures, why it is in the score, and the data field it reads.
| Factor | Weight | What it measures | Data used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reputation | 45% | The clinic’s Google star rating, adjusted for how many reviews stand behind it (formula below). | rating, review count |
| Review volume | 15% | log10 of the review count, scaled against the clinic with the most reviews in the same city. | review count |
| Recency | 10% | The share of the clinic’s reviews posted in the last 12 months. | reviews in the last 12 months |
| Access | 15% | Five checks worth 3 points each: open after 6pm, open Saturday, open Sunday, same-day or emergency care, accepting new patients. | opening hours, emergency and same-day flags, new-patient status |
| Services | 10% | How many of our 17 tracked services the clinic offers. On a service page, it is whether the clinic offers that service and has a matching specialist. | services, specialists on staff |
| Profile completeness | 5% | Whether the profile names its dentists and lists years open, languages, insurance or coverage, and photos. | named dentists, years open, languages, insurance, photos |
45%Reputation
Patients and answer engines both judge “best” by rating first, but a rating from a handful of reviews is noisy.
15%Review volume
A large, steady review base is evidence of a busy practice. The log scale stops one huge clinic from flattening everyone else.
10%Recency
A strong rating from five years ago says less about the clinic today than recent reviews do.
15%Access
Whether you can actually get an appointment matters as much as how good the clinic is.
10%Services
Broader in-house care means fewer referrals elsewhere.
5%Profile completeness
Clinics that publish verifiable facts are easier to choose and to hold to account.
On service pages (for example root canal in a city) the same score gets 3 service adjustments: +10 points when a matching specialist is on staff (endodontist, orthodontist, oral surgeon, periodontist, pediatric dentist), up to +10 for reviews that mention the service, and +5 for same-day care where it applies.
How the star rating is adjusted
A perfect score from 8 reviews should not beat a near-perfect score from a thousand.
A clinic with few reviews is pulled toward the city average. As its reviews grow, its own rating takes over. At 50 reviews, the clinic’s rating and the city average count equally.
Worked example, using an example city average of C = 4.3: a 5.0 with 8 reviews ranks below a 4.8 with 1,049.
| Order | Clinic | Google rating | Reviews | Weight on own rating | Adjusted rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Clinic B | 4.8 | 1,049 | 95% | 4.78 |
| #2 | Clinic C | 4.6 | 120 | 71% | 4.51 |
| #3 | Clinic A | 5.0 | 8 | 14% | 4.40 |
Clinics A, B and C are illustrations, not real clinics. Each city uses its own average C.
When data is missing
We never fill a gap with a guess.
If a factor’s input is missing, that factor is left out rather than set to zero or to an average. The score is renormalised over the factors we could measure, and the page shows how much of the method that covers.
In score bars, a measured factor is solid. A factor we have not collected yet is hatched:
Example only: based on access, services and profile completeness; Google ratings not yet collected.
As of October 2026, Google ratings are on file for 12,437 of 115,770 clinics. Until ratings are collected, most scores rest on access, services and profile completeness, and each list says so in its method line. The full score switches on automatically as ratings arrive.
We also don’t show review quotes, review themes or counts of reviews mentioning a treatment unless we hold the review text.
Where the data comes from
- Google Business data: star rating, review count, review dates, opening hours and listed attributes.
- Clinic websites: services, named dentists and their credentials, specialists, languages, years open, and published prices.
- Clinic-submitted profile data: practices that claim their profile can correct hours, services, dentists, new-patient status and coverage. Submitted changes are checked against the clinic’s own website or by phone before they count.
Every field is stored with its source and the date it was fetched. Facts like “accepting new patients” are shown with the date we last verified them.
Scores are stored, not computed when you load a page. Every page reads the same stored score, so a clinic’s number is identical on its profile, its city list and any service list.
Who is excluded
Some clinics are listed but not ranked; some are not listed at all.
| Rule | Status today | Effect | Clinics affected |
|---|---|---|---|
| Permanently closed | Active | Removed from rankings and lists. | 408 |
| Duplicate listing | Active | Merged into one profile; only one copy is ranked. | — |
| Fewer than 10 Google reviews | Starts when ratings are collected | Listed, but not given a rank. | — |
| No clinic website | Starts when ratings are collected | Listed, but not given a rank. | — |
The review and website rules depend on ratings we are still collecting, so they are switched off today. Applying them now would remove almost every clinic from every list.
When a page shows a ranking
- A city list uses the word “best” and shows ranks only when it has at least 3 rankable clinics. Smaller cities are listed as “Dentists in {City}”, without ranks, and are kept out of search indexes.
- Pages for a need (emergency, weekends, new patients, CDCP or Medicaid, a language) need at least 3 matching clinics. Specialist pages need 2. Neighbourhood pages need 5.
- We don’t publish a filtered page if more than 70% of its top 10 is the same as the city’s top 10. That filter appears as a section on the city page instead.
- Every “best” names its condition: best for weekends, best for kids, best by DR Score. Every number names its basis and date.
- The top 25 clinics on a list appear in full; every other clinic appears in a compact table on the same page.
What clinics can and cannot pay for
Clinics can pay for
- A Featured slot: a block labelled “Featured” and “Paid placement”, shown above the ranked list and outside it, with at most 3 clinics per page
- Listing features, such as a website link and an enhanced profile
- Patient leads from our booking form
Clinics can never pay for
- A higher rank, on any list
- A change to their DR Score or any factor in it
- Removal of a competitor, or of facts they dislike
- A “best for” pick in a verdict box
Each Featured card also states that clinic’s actual rank on the list, so readers see where it really places. Featured clinics are left out of the page’s ranked-list structured data.
Found a wrong fact or a clinic that should be excluded? Our editorial policy explains how to request a correction and how fast we act.