Are online reviews for dentists reliable?

The short answer is sometimes and sometimes not.  Although online reviews can give you a sense of what a dentist is like, they can also sometimes be misleading. It isn't that difficult for an unhappy patient to punish a dentist by writing a negative review(s) and it can be hard for some dentists to ask their happy patients to write positive reviews. Also an absence of negative reviews doesn't absolutely insure that a dental practice is worth going to either, since it is not terribly difficult for dentists to ask friends or co-workers to write glowing reviews.

That being said often overly negative reviews should often be discounted and many people feel that they can sift through different dentist's reviews in order to choose which practice they would like to visit. Also sites such as Google + and Yelp use proprietary algorithms to screen out "suspicious" reviews. ZocDoc sends emails to patients after each visit asking for feedback and patients of record are invited to post reviews.

To sum up, I think online reviews can be helpful to patients seeking a new dentist, but they are not by any means fool proof. They are likely to help a patient find a "friendly office" but often it can take a patient years to determine whether their dentist "stands the test of time".

  About the author: Lawrence Spindel DDS is a dentist  who has has maintained  a general and cosmetic dental practice in New York City, for over thirty years.