Dentist plus city on Google Maps: how Google picks the three practices in the local pack

Take a fictional city, Saint-Aurèle, with about ten dental practices. A patient there types "dentist Saint-Aurèle" on their phone. Google shows a map, then three practices, with their rating, their address and a button to call. The other practices exist, but you have to tap "More places" to see them. Few patients do.

How does Google choose those three practices? It does not hide it. Its help page describes three criteria: relevance, distance and prominence. This article turns them into concrete actions for a practice.

What Google shows when a patient types "dentist" and their city

The results page has two parts. At the top, the local pack (the three practices shown on the map): a map, three profiles and a link to the full list. Below it, the regular results: web pages, including practice websites, directories and Doctolib, France's leading online booking platform.

These two parts are not built from the same material. The local pack comes from the practices' Google Business Profiles. The regular results come from web pages. A practice can therefore appear in the local pack and be missing from the regular results, or the other way around.

On a phone, the map fills the whole screen and the regular results only appear after scrolling. The map is therefore the first visible choice, and often the only one.

Google's three official criteria

Google describes its three criteria on its help page about local ranking:

• Relevance: does the profile match what the patient is looking for?
• Distance: how far is the practice from the location of the search?
• Prominence: is the practice well known, on Google and across the rest of the internet?

Google combines all three. A practice that is very close but has an empty profile can rank behind a practice a little farther away with a complete, well-described profile. Conversely, a perfect profile cannot make up for an address on the other side of town.

Relevance: what your profile says about your treatments

Relevance comes down to words. Google compares what the patient typed with what your profile and your website state.

Three places matter. First, the profile's primary category: the one that says "dentist", along with secondary categories that match your practice, such as implant dentistry. Next, the services listed on the profile: a profile that lists implants and crowns answers more searches than a profile that only says "dentist". Finally, the words on your website: Google reads the website linked to the profile, and a page that explains how an implant is placed confirms that you place them.

In Saint-Aurèle, picture Cabinet du Pont, also fictional. Its profile's category is "Medical center", with no services listed, and its website is a single page. For "dentist Saint-Aurèle", Google has little reason to judge it relevant. A corrected category and three treatment pages change that judgment. Every field of the profile is covered on our Google Business Profile for dentists page.

Distance: where the patient searches from, not the city center

Many dentists believe Google ranks the practices "of the city". That is not what it does.

Google explains that distance is calculated from the location written in the search, and otherwise from the phone's location. On a phone, the two blend together: the patient types the name of their city, and Google also knows which neighborhood they are in. A patient in the north of Saint-Aurèle therefore does not see the same three practices as a patient in the south.

This explains a common situation. Cabinet des Halles, another fictional practice, sits in the center of Saint-Aurèle with a complete profile. Its dentist searches from the dental chair and sees the practice first. But a patient searching from the shopping area to the east sees two practices in their own neighborhood first. Cabinet des Halles is not poorly ranked. It is simply far from that particular patient.

Distance is not something you work on; it is something you measure. What you can work on is the weight of the other two criteria, so you stay in the top three even when a closer practice exists.

Prominence: what the rest of the internet says about you

Google uses the word "prominence" to mean how well known a business is. Its help page says this criterion rests on what Google knows about a business from across the internet: links pointing to it, articles, directories. The number of reviews, the rating and the website's position in the regular results also count. Public posts from a professional Instagram account are also part of what Google can read, under three conditions we detail in our article on Instagram being indexed by Google.

For a practice, this comes down to four things:

• A website in your name, linked to the profile, with your treatments, your team and your hours.
• Directories that know you: the health directory of the French national health insurance (Assurance Maladie), the directory of the French Dental Council (Ordre national des chirurgiens-dentistes), Doctolib, local directories.
• Identical information everywhere: the practice name, address, phone number and hours written exactly the same way, down to the letter, on every platform.
• Citations, meaning mentions of your name, address and phone number on other websites: city hall, local associations, local press.

When these sources contradict each other, Google hesitates. A practice called "Cabinet dentaire de la Gare" on its website, "Dr Martin" on its profile and "Cabinet Martin" in a directory looks like three questionable businesses to a machine. A practice whose information matches everywhere gains prominence without buying anything. The risk is highest when taking over a dental practice, when the name changes.

On reviews, the rule does not change. Google counts them, but a dentist does not solicit reviews: in 2025, the Dental Council asked the French Ministry of Health to remove reviews about practitioners. You respond neutrally to existing reviews, or not at all, as explained in our article on Google reviews and the code of ethics. Our guide what the Dental Council allows on a dentist website sets out the rules.

The role of the practice website in the local pack

You might think the map only looks at the profile. Google says otherwise: the website's position in the regular results is taken into account for the map. The website therefore works twice: it gets the practice into the regular results, and it strengthens its profile in the local pack.

In practice, the website gives Google what the profile cannot hold: one page per treatment, with the steps, the duration and the fees; a page for the team; a page for directions, with the address written exactly as on the profile. All of it readable on a phone and quick to load. Our dental practice website page describes this structure. A one-page website with no treatment named says nothing more than the profile.

Check your ranking from a phone, at three spots in your city

You can measure your ranking yourself, without any tool. You need a phone with location turned on, and three moments in your day.

1. Open Google Maps or Google on your phone, ideally in a private (incognito) window, to limit the effect of your past searches.
2. Type "dentist" followed by the name of your city. Write down the three practices shown, in order.
3. Then type "dentist" on its own, then "dental implant" followed by the city. Write them down again.
4. Repeat these searches from two other spots in the city: a neighborhood your patients come from, and a busy location, such as the train station or a shopping area.
5. Put everything into a table.

For Cabinet des Halles, the table might look like this, with fictional practices:

This table shows that the practice stays in the top three from three spots in the city, and that it drops back when a closer practice exists. If yours disappears as soon as you move two streets away, relevance or prominence is too weak to make up for distance.

What changes nothing, and what Google forbids

Three ideas come up often. None of them works, and two are forbidden.

Paying. Google states on the same help page that no payment can buy a place in the local ranking. Paid ads are shown separately, labeled "Sponsored". For a dentist, the question does not even arise: Article R.4127-217 II of the French Public Health Code (code de la santé publique) prohibits obtaining priority placement in listings, for payment or by any other means, "paid or not" according to the Dental Council. Our article on the advertising ban for dentists details these rules.

Multiplying profiles. One profile for the practice, and one per dentist if you wish. Never a profile at an address where no patients are seen, and never a second profile for the same practice. Google's guidelines for representing your business forbid it, and a profile in violation can be suspended.

Stuffing the name with keywords. A profile named "Cabinet des Halles dentist implants Saint-Aurèle" breaks the same guidelines. The profile name must be the practice's real name, the one on your sign. Treatments go in the fields designed for them and in the pages of your website.

What Google rewards is simpler and slower: an accurate profile, a website that explains your treatments, identical information everywhere. That is the foundation of dental SEO, where the map is just one of three doors, along with the regular results and AI answers.

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