Why It Took Me 18 Years to Ask for Google Reviews at My Dental Clinic (And What I Lost Because of It)

"Medicine is not a restaurant"

That's what I said. Word for word, that's what I told my partner Elena when she suggested we start asking patients for reviews. I'd been practicing in Vigo for eighteen years, had an established clinic with patients who came three generations in a row, and the idea of putting star ratings on a relationship that is, let's be honest, fairly intimate didn't sit well with me at all. Nobody wants to announce they've had a root canal.

The problem was that the new clinics, those chains that have been expanding for years, had two hundred, three hundred reviews. I had nine. Nine that didn't seem few to me, but looked embarrassing by comparison.

Elena didn't convince me in one go. She wore me down gradually. She argued that patients with dental phobia are the ones who search most on Google before deciding, that they look for "dentist in Vigo who doesn't hurt" or "dental clinic with no waiting time" or things like that. That if I didn't appear, I simply didn't exist for that segment.

What made me give in was the way it worked.

The WhatsApp message didn't directly ask for a review. It asked how the patient was feeling after the visit, how everything had gone. Only if they responded positively did the suggestion to share their experience on Google arrive, naturally. For everyone else, just a follow-up message.

That I could understand. That was caring for the patient, not doing marketing.

Six months later I had 44 reviews and a 4.9-star average. Not many compared to the chains, but they're mine, they're recent, and they're specific.

What I didn't expect: three of those reviews mentioned "no pain." One from an older gentleman who wrote that in forty years it was the first time he'd left a dental clinic without needing to take two ibuprofen. Another from a young woman who wrote that she'd been avoiding the dentist for five years and had finally managed to go. Those words, "no pain" and "dentist Vigo," started positioning me for searches by people with dental phobia.

Now the people searching for me are exactly the people who need me most: those who are afraid.

Elena was right. I still don't compare my practice to a restaurant. But I understand that the information published by the patients themselves can help someone who's been afraid for years finally take the step. And that does make medical sense.