6 small mistakes that make a good practice look bad online

Six small mistakes make a good practice look bad online: opening hours that don’t match reality, complaints sitting unanswered under your name, photos from two refits ago, a Christmas notice still up in summer, an email address that looks borrowed, and a review page that stopped in 2023. None of them says anything true about your care – but online, patients can’t see your care, only your housekeeping. Each fix below takes minutes; together they change how the whole practice reads.

Mistake 1: opening hours that don’t match reality

Google says you open at 8; the door says 8:30; the website says 9. To a patient, a practice that can’t keep its own hours straight probably runs its waiting room the same way – and the one who arrives to a locked door will say so publicly. The fix: pick the true hours, then correct Google, the website and the door sign in one sitting. Add bank holidays to the same checklist as the answerphone message.

Mistake 2: complaints sitting unanswered under your name

The one-star review from March, still hanging there with no reply, is the loudest thing on your page – not because of what the reviewer said, but because of what your silence says: nobody here is watching. The reply is really for the readers, and it works: businesses that respond to reviews are seen as 1.7× more trustworthy (Google/Ipsos). The fix: reply to every review, oldest complaints first – brief, courteous, and never confirming anyone is a patient: “We’re sorry this fell short – please contact our practice manager so we can put it right.”

Mistake 3: photos from two refits ago

Your Google photos show the old signage, the waiting room before the refurbishment, and a team member who left in 2022. Patients assume the photos are the truth and the invoice for the refit was wasted on them. The fix: ten minutes with a phone on a bright morning – entrance, reception, a treatment room – and delete the outdated ones. No patients in frame; staff only with written consent.

Mistake 4: the Christmas notice in July

“Festive opening hours” on the homepage in midsummer is a small thing that answers a big question: when did anyone here last look at this website? Stale notices, “news” from three years ago and a copyright line reading 2021 all read the same way – unattended. The fix: delete anything dated the moment it expires, and prune the news section to nothing rather than let it age. A sparse, current site beats a full, stale one.

Mistake 5: an email address that looks borrowed

themaplesdental2014@gmail.com on the contact page of a practice charging private fees creates a flicker of doubt no waiting-room refurbishment can buy back. It isn’t fatal – it just doesn’t match the practice you actually run. The fix: an address at your own domain – hello@yourpractice.co.uk – usually costs a few pounds a month through whoever hosts the website, and the old address can forward to it so nothing is missed.

Mistake 6: a review page that stopped in 2023

A decent rating built on reviews whose most recent entry is eighteen months old whispers that something changed – new owners? gone downhill? closed? Readers weigh recency as heavily as the stars, and there are many readers: 76% of consumers regularly read online reviews when browsing local businesses (BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2023). Since NHS.uk closed its public star-ratings in 2025, this one page is where UK patients look. The fix: restart the routine – a short message to each patient after their visit: “Thanks for visiting [practice name]. If you have 20 seconds, we’d value your feedback: [link].” Ask everyone, reward no one – incentives and hand-picking breach Google’s policies – and a steady trickle of fresh reviews follows.

The audit takes one lunchtime

Search your practice the way a stranger would, on a phone, and check the six: hours, replies, photos, dated notices, email, review recency. Everything above is fixable this week without a budget – which is exactly the point. The care was never the problem; the housekeeping just needs to stop contradicting it.