More Google reviews, inside AHPRA's rules.
The short answer: most established practices have hundreds of happy patients Google has never heard from. Waypoint fixes that end to end. A paced invitation campaign to the patients you have already treated, then an ongoing ask at the right moment for every patient, with replies handled for you. Neutral wording, no incentives, no filtering who gets asked, so it stays inside AHPRA's advertising rules. Your front desk does nothing new.
Reviews decide who gets the call
When someone searches "dentist" plus your suburb, Google puts the practices with the deepest and freshest review base at the top. The research is blunt about how patients read them:
- 74%only trust reviews written in the last 3 months. Recency matters as much as rating.
- 68%will not consider a business under 4 stars, and nearly a third now expect 4.5 or better.
- 80%are more likely to choose a practice that replies to its reviews.
Source: BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, a US consumer panel (n=1,002). Australian data on this is thinner, but the behaviour tracks closely.
How it works
- 01
Start with the patients you already have
A practice that has been open ten years has thousands of past patients who were never asked. We run a paced invitation campaign to that list, spread over the first weeks. Paced matters: a sudden flood of reviews looks like spam to Google, a steady climb looks like what it is.
- 02
Then ask every patient at the right moment
From there, every patient gets a neutral invitation at the moment they are most likely to act on it. No selecting, no filtering, no scripts asking them to mention outcomes. Just a well-timed ask from a practice they like.
- 03
We reply, you watch the numbers
Replying to reviews is a trust signal patients notice and most practices never get to. We draft and post the replies. You approve the wording style once, then watch your count and rating on a simple page we set up for you.
Built around the advertising rules, not bolted on
Health practices live under advertising rules that most review tools were never built for. Our process holds three lines that never move:
- ✓No clinical prompting. Patients are never asked to comment on treatment or outcomes. The invitation is neutral: share your experience.
- ✓No incentives. No discounts, no prize draws, no donation-per-review schemes. An induced review breaches both AHPRA guidance and Google's policies.
- ✓No gating. We never filter who gets asked or intercept unhappy patients into a private channel. Everyone gets the same invitation.
General information, not legal advice. Every practice is responsible for its own advertising obligations under the National Law. We build our process around those rules and are happy to walk your team through exactly how it works.
When we are not the right fit
- Your rating is under 4.0. More reviews would amplify the problem, not fix it. Sort out the underlying experience first; reviews come after.
- You already have hundreds of recent reviews. You are winning this game. Your money is better spent elsewhere, and we will tell you that on the first call.
- You are part of a corporate group. Central marketing teams usually own this. We work with independent, owner-run practices.
Questions dentists actually ask
Is it AHPRA compliant to ask patients for Google reviews?
Yes, when it is done properly. The National Law prohibits using testimonials about clinical care in your advertising. Asking a patient, neutrally, to share their experience on Google is not prohibited, and AHPRA confirms you are not responsible for reviews on platforms you do not control. Separately, Google's review policy prohibits rewarding reviews or filtering who gets asked, and the ACCC treats undisclosed incentivised reviews as misleading. Waypoint's process stays on the right side of all of it: neutral wording, no incentives, no gating.
Can we choose which patients get asked?
No, and that protects you. Selecting only your happiest patients is called review gating. Google's review policies prohibit it for every business in every industry, and in health it also cuts against AHPRA's advertising rules. Every patient gets the same neutral invitation. In practice this is not a problem: practices with genuinely good care see their rating hold or rise as volume grows.
How quickly do reviews come in?
The first lift comes from patients you have already treated. A paced invitation campaign to your existing patient list typically produces a noticeable jump inside the first month. It is deliberately spread over weeks, not blasted in a day, because a sudden spike looks like spam to Google. After that, ongoing right-moment asks keep a steady rhythm of new reviews arriving.
What does our front desk have to do?
Nothing new. You approve the wording once at the start. The asks go out automatically, the reviews come in, and we reply to them for you. You can watch the numbers move on a simple page we set up for your practice.
Do you write or buy reviews?
Never. Fake or purchased reviews breach Google's policies and Australian Consumer Law, and they are exactly the kind of shortcut that gets a health practice in trouble. Every review comes from a real patient who chose to leave it. Our job is making sure they get asked at the right moment, nothing more.
Start with your practice's snapshot.
We prepare a free one-page review snapshot for your practice: your real Google numbers next to the practices around you, and what closing the gap would look like. If we have already posted or emailed you one, reply to it and we will walk you through it in ten minutes.