Two things about Google reviews are true at once, and they pull in opposite directions.
Google states plainly, on its own local ranking page, that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking”.
In Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors, a survey of 47 local search practitioners scoring 187 factors, high Google ratings came sixth, the quantity of native Google reviews with text came ninth, and review recency came eleventh.
Three of the top twelve are reviews.
Meanwhile you are a registered health practitioner, and the National Law prohibits using testimonials to advertise a regulated health service.
So most dental practices land in one of two bad places.
Either they ignore reviews entirely because someone told them AHPRA does not allow it, or they run the same review tactics a plumber runs and quietly accumulate exposure.
Neither is necessary.
The rules are more workable than the first group thinks and stricter than the second group thinks, and the difference sits in a distinction almost nobody explains properly.
The claim that is repeated everywhere and is not in the guidance
Search “can dentists ask for Google reviews” and you will find Australian marketing sites telling you that AHPRA says not to encourage patients to leave reviews.
I went looking for that sentence.
It is not in the advertising guidelines, it is not in the testimonial tool, and it is not in the advertising FAQ.
Across all three documents the word “solicit” does not appear once, and every instance of “encourage” refers to a different limb of section 133, the one about encouraging unnecessary use of health services.
The prohibition in the National Law attaches to using a testimonial in advertising.
Not to asking for one.
That matters, because the practical advice that follows from the two readings is completely different.
Under the myth, you do nothing and your profile stays thin.
Under the actual rule, you can build review volume like any other business, and the compliance work sits in what you do with the reviews afterwards.
One caution before anyone over-reads this.
AHPRA has not said asking is fine either.
It has said nothing about the act of asking.
Absence of prohibition is not endorsement, and if you ask in a way that steers patients toward praising the treatment specifically, you are collecting testimonials on purpose, which is a different thing from collecting reviews.
Ask about the visit.
Do not ask about the dentistry.
Which Google Reviews Count as a Testimonial
Covered in more depth in the companion piece on AHPRA advertising rules, but the definition is short enough to repeat.
AHPRA: testimonials are “recommendations or positive statements about the clinical aspects of a regulated health service”, where clinical aspects means “statements about symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, outcome”.
And immediately after, the sentence that does most of the work:
Not all reviews or positive comments made about a regulated health service are considered testimonials. For example, comments about customer service or communication style that do not include a reference to clinical aspects are not considered testimonials for the purposes of the National Law.
The testimonial tool puts it even more plainly: “Reviews (i.e. feedback about healthcare experiences that does not refer to clinical aspects of a regulated health service) are allowed in advertising.”
So a review saying the practice ran on time, the reception team was patient with a nervous kid, and parking was straightforward is publishable.
A review saying the root canal was painless and the crown matches perfectly is not, in anything you control.
There is also a second category worth knowing about.
A “purported testimonial” is defined in the guidelines as “a statement or representation that appears to be a testimonial, whether provided in the first or third person“.
That clause catches a practice writing patient-voice quotes itself, which is more common on dental websites than it should be.
Where Google sits, and why I am flagging this as inference
Here is a detail that surprised me.
AHPRA never mentions Google. Not Google reviews, not Google Business Profile, not Google Maps.
The only platform named anywhere in the three documents is Facebook, once.
Everything else is described generically as “a search engine or a review platform”.
So anyone who tells you “AHPRA says Google reviews are fine” is applying a general test, not quoting an example.
Including me.
Here is the test, verbatim from section 3.2 of the guidelines.
An advertiser controls advertising if:
they publish or authorise content or direct someone to publish or draft content (including a third party, staff member or marketing agency) or there is a mechanism for the advertiser to modify or remove content published by an unrelated publisher.
Apply that to a Google Business Profile.
You did not publish the patient’s review and did not authorise it.
You cannot edit it, you cannot delete it, and unlike a Facebook page, Google gives you no switch to turn the review function off.
On both limbs you have no control.
The guidelines then say directly: “Advertisers are not responsible for removing (or trying to have removed) testimonials published on platforms they do not control.”
And the FAQ adds that boards “do not expect you to monitor the internet or social media for things that may be written about you in forums you do not control”.
The conclusion follows cleanly, but it is a conclusion drawn from a test rather than a rule written about Google.
If your risk tolerance is low, that is the kind of thing to put to your indemnity insurer rather than to a marketing agency.
Facebook is different, and AHPRA does address it.
If a clinic Facebook page is used to promote the practice, it is advertising, and testimonials posted there are your responsibility.
The guidelines note that “not all social media sites allow for editing or removal of testimonials” and that compliance “may be achieved by disabling the reviews/testimonials functions”.
Most dental practices should just turn Facebook recommendations off.
You get very little from them and they carry a duty you cannot discharge any other way.
The Google Reviews Widget Problem
This is where practices get into trouble, and it is almost always installed by a web developer with good intentions.
A Google reviews widget on your homepage takes patient text from a platform you do not control and republishes it on a platform you do.
The moment it renders on your site, you have published it.
Limb one of the control test, exactly.
If any of those reviews mention treatment, symptoms or outcomes, and on a dental practice profile a good number will, you now have testimonials in your own advertising.
The same logic covers screenshotting a five-star review for Instagram, quoting one in a Google Ads sitelink, and printing one in a waiting room brochure.
AHPRA’s FAQ is explicit about the social case: it means “not sharing or re-tweeting any comments made by a person about a clinical aspect of a regulated health service you provide on a third-party website”.
There is a second, unrelated reason to be sceptical of review widgets.
Google’s review snippet documentation, updated 24 July 2026, states that where the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, its pages are ineligible for the star review feature, “including through an embedded third-party widget (for example, Google Business reviews or Facebook reviews widget)”.
So the widget will not give you stars in search results.
It was never going to.
If that was the pitch, the pitch was wrong.
Showing only the good ones is the sharpest trap
Most review widgets have a setting called something like “minimum rating to display”.
Practices set it to four or five stars and think nothing of it.
AHPRA published a media release about this on 13 June 2018, headed Selectively editing reviews or testimonials may break the law.
It gives three examples of what is inherently misleading:
edit a review that is negative to make it positive, as this falsely presents the feedback edit a review that has a mix of negative and positive comments so that the published review only has positive comments, as this falsely implies that the reviewer only had positive feedback, or edit a review so that it no longer accurately reflects all the reviewer’s feedback and presents an inaccurate or false impression of the reviewer’s views.
Then AHPRA’s then-CEO Martin Fletcher, quoted directly:
If advertisers edit reviews or testimonials there is a high risk that the edited reviews will become misleading or deceptive. Only publishing complete and unedited reviews that are not testimonials will help advertisers to avoid breaching the National Law.
And the testimonial tool extends it past editing to selection: “if reviews are edited, either by removing part of the review or by selectively including/excluding whole reviews, then publishing reviews has the potential to be misleading and breach the advertising requirements of the National Law.”
A four-star-minimum filter is selective inclusion of whole reviews.
It is doing precisely the thing named.
Fletcher also noted the second regulator in the room: moderation practices “must comply with the National Law and the Australian Consumer Law”.
Misleading conduct is the ACCC’s territory regardless of what your board thinks, and the ACCC has been active on fake and filtered reviews.
Google prohibits the same behaviour, from a different direction
Worth knowing that the platform agrees, for its own reasons.
Google’s prohibited and restricted content policy covers what it calls fake engagement.
Businesses may not discourage or prohibit negative reviews, and may not selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.
Offering payment, discounts, or free goods and services in exchange for a review is prohibited.
So is instructing staff to solicit a set number of reviews, or to solicit reviews containing particular content.
Enforcement is not just review removal.
Google states it may restrict a profile, which can include blocking it from receiving new reviews or ratings for a period, unpublishing existing reviews, or displaying a public warning that fake reviews were removed.
A warning label on your profile would be considerably worse for you than the reviews you were trying to suppress.
So “send the happy patients to Google and the unhappy ones to a private feedback form” fails twice.
It is selective solicitation under Google’s policy, and it manufactures a misleading public record under the National Law and the ACL.
Replying to Google Reviews: The Part Nobody Can Answer Cleanly
Consumers expect replies.
In BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 89% expected business owners to respond to reviews, 80% said they were more likely to use a business that responds to all of them, and 42% said they were unlikely to use one that never replies.
Half said generic or templated replies put them off.
Read the methodology before you act on those numbers, though: 1,002 US adults, surveyed via SurveyMonkey.
There is no Australian sample.
There is no dental or healthcare breakdown.
I have not found an Australian equivalent, and if someone quotes you a percentage of Australian dental patients from this survey, it is not in there.
Now the awkward part.
AHPRA’s guidance says:
Advertisers should take care if they choose to engage with reviews on third-party websites as this may be considered using a testimonial to advertise a regulated health service.
“Engage with” is not defined.
The FAQ makes clear it covers sharing and re-tweeting.
Whether a short thank-you reply beneath a Google review counts as using that testimonial in advertising is not resolved anywhere in AHPRA’s published material, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What I would do, and this is judgement rather than a rule: reply in a way that adds nothing about clinical care and quotes nothing back.
“Thanks for taking the time to write this, we’re glad the visit went smoothly.
See you at the next check-up.”
You have acknowledged a person without repeating or amplifying a claim about treatment.
Negative reviews carry a separate and much older obligation, which is patient confidentiality.
Do not confirm someone was a patient, do not correct their account of their treatment, and do not explain what happened clinically.
Every one of those is a privacy problem before it is an advertising problem.
Offer to take it offline and give a contact.
A Google Reviews Routine That Survives Both Rulebooks
Ask every patient, not selected ones.
Ask on the way out or by a message afterwards, in a way that goes to everyone regardless of how the appointment went.
Ask about the visit, not the treatment.
“How did we do today?” collects service comments.
“How happy are you with your new veneers?” collects testimonials, and you are the one who asked for them.
Do not offer anything in return.
Google prohibits it, and under section 133 an inducement without stated conditions is its own offence.
Keep your own site free of clinical review content.
If you want reviews on the page, use only comments about service, publish them complete and unedited, and do not filter by star rating.
Honestly, the safest version is a link to your Google profile and no widget at all.
Turn off Facebook recommendations.
Reply to everything, briefly, without clinical detail.
Leave Google alone otherwise.
You do not have to monitor it, you do not have to try to remove testimonials from it, and attempting to curate it is where the risk starts.
The rest is volume and recency, which is a systems problem rather than a legal one.
BrightLocal’s US sample found 47% would not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% look for reviews written within the last three months.
Whitespark’s panel ranks recency eleventh of 187 factors.
A practice with 200 reviews and none since March reads worse than one with 60 that are current.
Questions practices ask
Are we allowed to ask patients for Google reviews?
Nothing in AHPRA’s advertising guidelines, testimonial tool or advertising FAQ prohibits asking.
The prohibition applies to using testimonials in advertising you control.
Ask everyone, ask about the visit rather than the treatment, and offer nothing in exchange.
Do we have to get clinical reviews removed from Google?
No. AHPRA states advertisers are not responsible for removing testimonials published on platforms they do not control, and that boards do not expect you to monitor forums you do not control.
Can we put our Google reviews on our website?
Only ones with no reference to symptoms, diagnosis, treatment or outcome, published complete and unedited, with no filtering by rating.
A standard reviews widget will fail all three conditions by default.
Is a four-star minimum filter on our widget a problem?
Yes.
AHPRA’s testimonial tool names “selectively including/excluding whole reviews” as capable of being misleading.
Google’s own policy separately prohibits selectively soliciting positive reviews.
Can we send unhappy patients to a private form instead?
That is review gating.
It breaches Google’s fake engagement policy and creates a misleading public record.
Use a feedback form for everyone or for nobody.
Should we reply to reviews?
Consumers strongly expect it, though the data on that is US only.
AHPRA warns advertisers to “take care” when engaging with reviews on third-party sites and does not define the term.
Keep replies short, add no clinical detail, quote nothing back, and never confirm someone was a patient in a reply to a negative review.
Will review schema get us stars in Google?
Not for reviews of yourself.
Google’s documentation rules out self-serving reviews for the star feature, including via embedded widgets.
Do reviews affect rankings?
Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.
Whitespark’s 2026 panel places ratings, review quantity with text, and recency in the top twelve of 187 factors.
Both are worth taking seriously, and neither is a guarantee.
How do we ask a patient for a Google review without collecting a testimonial?
Ask about the visit rather than the dentistry.
A request that steers the patient toward praising the treatment is a request for a testimonial, whatever it is called.
A request that asks how the appointment went — booking, reception, waiting time, whether things were explained clearly — collects the kind of comment you are allowed to reuse.
Is it legal to offer a discount or a prize draw for leaving a review?
Google’s own prohibited and restricted content policy rules out incentivised reviews regardless of what AHPRA says, so this fails on the platform rules before you reach the National Law.
Section 133 then adds its own constraint on advertising an inducement without stating its terms.
Can we ask unhappy patients to contact us privately instead of leaving a review?
Inviting any patient to raise a problem with the practice directly is ordinary practice management.
Routing dissatisfied patients to a private form while routing satisfied ones to Google is review gating — Google prohibits it, and AHPRA’s 2018 media release warns that selectively editing reviews or testimonials may break the law.
Should we turn off reviews on our Facebook page to stay compliant?
It removes a surface you control, and with it any clinical comment posted there.
It also removes the review volume.
The alternative is monitoring the page and taking down comments that refer to symptoms, diagnosis, treatment or outcome, which is the same work the rest of your advertising already requires.
Why can our competitors show star ratings in Google and we cannot?
Star review snippets are a separate mechanism from your Google Business Profile rating, and Google’s documentation rules out the self-serving case: where the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, including through an embedded third-party widget, the page is ineligible.
Anyone selling you review schema for stars on your own site is selling something Google has ruled out in writing.
What do we do about a review that names a treatment and praises the outcome?
On Google, nothing — it is not advertising you control and AHPRA does not expect you to police it.
Do not screenshot it, quote it in a newsletter, or pull it onto your website through a widget.
Reproducing it is what moves it into material you control.
How many Google reviews does a dental practice actually need?
There is no threshold, and any number quoted to you is invented.
What the survey evidence supports is that quantity of reviews with text, high ratings and recency all carry weight, which makes the useful goal a steady flow rather than a target.
This article describes publicly available regulatory requirements and platform policies.
It is not legal advice.
Verify against ahpra.gov.au before acting, particularly on the question of whether a given platform is advertising within your control, which depends on facts specific to your practice.
Sources
- AHPRA: Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, issued 14 December 2020 (control test s3.2, testimonials s4.3)
- AHPRA: Testimonials: understand the requirements
- AHPRA: Advertising FAQs
- AHPRA: Selectively editing reviews or testimonials may break the law, 13 June 2018
- Google: Prohibited and restricted content
- Google: Tips to improve your local ranking
- Google: Review snippet structured data, updated 24 July 2026
- Whitespark: 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors, published 6 November 2025, 47 respondents scoring 187 factors
- BrightLocal: Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, published 11 February 2026, 1,002 US adults
