NamedLocal › Studies › National: dentists
We took 37 established dental practices from public "best dentist" lists in San Diego, Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Dallas, asked Google's AI the questions a patient actually types, and recorded who it named back. 18 of the 37 never came up.
Our national plumbers study found 53% invisible. Dentists: 49%. Two different trades, the same picture: roughly half of established local businesses don't exist in AI's answers.
These rosters skew toward the strong end of each market: multi-year "top dentist" award winners and practices with thousands of reviews. A random sample of every practice in each city would almost certainly look worse.
The pattern
Reviews and awards are reputation signals for humans. AI assistants assemble their answers from a different footprint: what a practice's site says in machine-readable form and where it's mentioned across the sources the AI reads. In city after city, the two barely overlap.
By city
| City | Checked | Never named | Invisible |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Diego, CA | 7 | 6 | 86% |
| Atlanta, GA | 6 | 5 | 83% |
| Denver, CO | 6 | 3 | 50% |
| Phoenix, AZ | 6 | 3 | 50% |
| Minneapolis, MN | 7 | 1 | 14% |
| Dallas, TX | 5 | 0 | 0% |
| Total | 37 | 18 | 49% |
The spread is the second story: 86% invisible in San Diego, 0% in Dallas. Right now, where a practice operates matters more than how decorated it is.
How we checked
Nothing you can't repeat yourself. For each city we sent Google's AI (the Gemini model behind Google's AI answers) 10 real patient-style questions, twice each, and recorded every dental practice it named. Questions like:
A practice counts as "invisible" if it was named in none of the 20 answers. Rosters came from public "best dentist in [city]" lists, so they skew toward established, award-listed practices.
The practices
| Singing Hills Dentistry | 0/20 | invisible |
| Carmel Mountain Dental Care | 0/20 | invisible |
| Mission Bay Family Dentistry | 0/20 | invisible |
| Dental Design SD | 0/20 | invisible |
| Fresh Dental Care of Hillcrest | 0/20 | invisible |
| Espire Dental La Jolla | 0/20 | invisible |
| A+ Family Dentistry | 1/20 | partial |
| Peter A. Pate, DDS | 0/20 | invisible |
| Rifkin Dental Group | 0/20 | invisible |
| Dental TLC | 0/20 | invisible |
| Magnolia Dentistry | 0/20 | invisible |
| Wohlers Family Dentistry | 0/20 | invisible |
| Atlanta Dental Spa | 7/20 | partial |
| Wynkoop Dentistry | 0/20 | invisible |
| First Choice Dental | 0/20 | invisible |
| Espire Dental | 0/20 | invisible |
| My Cherry Creek Dentist | 2/20 | partial |
| Metropolitan Dental Care | 3/20 | partial |
| Corson Dentistry | 4/20 | partial |
| Life Smiles Dental Care | 0/20 | invisible |
| Desert Vista Dental | 0/20 | invisible |
| Central Valley Dentistry & Implants | 0/20 | invisible |
| Biltmore Commons Dental Care | 1/20 | partial |
| Studio B Smiles | 3/20 | partial |
| Biltmore Dental Center | 5/20 | partial |
| Nicollet Mall Dental Arts | 0/20 | invisible |
| Linden Hills Dentistry | 1/20 | partial |
| Englander Dental | 4/20 | partial |
| Parkway Dental Center | 5/20 | partial |
| Loop Dental | 7/20 | partial |
| Tangletown Dental | 11/20 | strong |
| Park Dental | 16/20 | strong |
| Dallas Esthetics | 1/20 | partial |
| Contemporary Dentistry of Dallas | 2/20 | partial |
| Dallas Laser Dentistry | 4/20 | partial |
| North Dallas Family Dental | 7/20 | partial |
| Midtown Family Dentistry of Dallas | 8/20 | partial |
Snapshot from July 2026. AI answers shift over time, so this is where things stood when we ran it, not a permanent verdict. This measures whether AI names a practice, not the quality of its care, and we're not affiliated with any of these practices.
Who AI does name
The AI wasn't refusing to answer. In every city it named practices confidently: a long, shifting set that changed with the phrasing, often including practices that weren't on any "best of" list we found. ClearChoice, a national implant chain, showed up in four of the six markets, the same way Roto-Rooter appeared in every city of our plumbers study. National brands with heavy web footprints are quietly winning local AI answers.
That instability is the opening. Outside Minneapolis, nobody owns these answers yet. The practices that do get named have a footprint AI can actually read: consistent listings, mentions on sources it trusts, and a site that says plainly what they do and where. That's learnable, and it's exactly the kind of thing a practice can fix.
A note for the practices on this list
If you run one of these practices and want the specific questions you were missing from, plus the two or three things on your site that would most improve your odds, email jeff@namedlocal.com and I'll send your breakdown. No charge, and no pitch you didn't ask for.
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