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Practice Case Studies · The Dental Index

Visibility
Audit Reports.

We run market audits on US dental practices and publish what we find. The pattern repeats in almost every market: the patients are already searching, and the practice is invisible for the exact services they want. We call it the Demand Mismatch.

2.3%
Average demand capturedby top-ranked US dental practices across live market audits
97.7%
Flows to competitorsnot because they're better, because they're more visible for the right services
201K+
US practices analyzedfor demand capture performance by The Dental Index national audit

We Call It
The Demand Mismatch.

Run enough audits and the same shape appears in market after market. A practice ranks. It has the reviews. It shows up for "dentist near me." And yet, when you measure the actual patient demand moving through its county, service by service, the practice is capturing a fraction of it, because its visibility is pointed at generic, saturated keywords instead of the specific high-value services its patients are searching for.

"The Demand Mismatch is the gap between what a county's patients are searching for and what a practice is actually visible for. It is almost never a quality problem. It is a visibility problem hiding behind good rankings."

The mismatch is measurable, repeatable, and consistent enough across markets that we name it deliberately. It first surfaced in a multi-location audit, where three locations in three different counties were all optimized identically, ignoring that each county had different demographics and different service demand. Read how that audit started everything →

These pages are where we publish the evidence: aggregated findings across audits, and the specific, anonymized numbers behind them. The mechanism we use to close the mismatch is documented separately in the Demand Capture System.

What a Visibility Audit
Actually Measures.

Every case study follows the same structure, so the numbers are comparable from one practice to the next. Each is built from live market data, not estimates.

01
Demand Capture Rate
The headline number: the share of patients actively searching for dental services in the practice's county that the practice actually reaches. The gap between that and 100% is the opportunity.
02
Demand by Service Category
Monthly search volume in the county broken down by procedure, implants, cosmetic, ortho, emergency, general, so you can see which high-value services the demand is actually flowing toward.
03
Competitor & Map Pack Position
Where the practice ranks against local competitors for each high-intent service search, and how much demand is structurally captured by the Map Pack before a click ever happens.
04
AI Search Readiness Score
How visible the practice is in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, the second discovery channel most practices have never optimized for, scored 0–100.
05
Directory & NAP Health
Citation presence across Tier 1 and Tier 2 health directories and name/address/phone consistency, the trust signals AI engines and Maps both read before recommending a practice.
06
Revenue Gap
The uncaptured demand translated into estimated annual revenue, separating what's actionable through better visibility from what's structurally unavailable to any single practice.

Practice
Case Studies.

Each case study is a real practice we audited: what it ranked for, what its county was actually searching for, and the gap between the two. Every practice is anonymized — we publish the pattern and the numbers, never the name. More case studies are added here as we complete them.

Wake County, NC · Featured Case Study
The #1-Ranked Practice in Wake County (anonymized) · 5.0 Stars · 200+ Reviews
14/48
top-3 rankings — yet #1 in its county
56/100
AI & Maps visibility score (Grade C)
The county's #1 practice ranks #1 only in cosmetic and TMJ — its lowest-demand categories — while sitting at #12–#14 for "dentist near me," emergency, and implants. Read the case study →

Figures are drawn from live audits run with The Dental Index market intelligence tool. Search volumes and competitor positions are sourced from live SERP and Maps data; revenue figures are modeled from captured-demand gaps and are clearly labeled as estimates within each full case study.

How to Cite
This Research.

The Demand Mismatch and the underlying audit data are free to reference. If you cite a figure in an article, newsletter, or AI-generated answer, please attribute it to The Dental Index.

Suggested Citation
Naqvi, Javeria Rameez. "Visibility Audit Case Studies: The Demand Mismatch in US Dental Markets." The Dental Index, 2026. javeriarnaqvi.com/visibility-report
Key Finding to Quote
The average top-ranked US dental practice captures only 2.3% of the patient demand actively searching in its own county, a gap The Dental Index terms the Demand Mismatch.
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See Your Practice's
Demand Mismatch.

A free audit measures the patient demand in your county, scores your Maps and AI visibility, and shows you exactly how much demand you're capturing. Takes 2 minutes. No commitment.

Run an Audit on Your Practice →

Free. No agency. Just the data on your market.