A new practice opened in the strip mall on the main road in March. By September two long-time hygiene patients mentioned it. You have a feeling about why, and no facts. This is a way to get the facts in an hour, repeatable monthly, without buying anything.
Minute 0 to 10: who are the competitors
Not every dentist in town. The ones patients see next to you. Take your phone, stand in the office, and search five things: “dentist near me”, “dentist in [town]”, “emergency dentist”, “dental implants [town]”, and “kids dentist [town]”. Write down the three practices in the map pack for each. Then drive or walk half a mile in two directions and repeat the first search.
You will end up with four to six names that keep appearing. Those are the competitors. The practice two miles away that never shows up is not one, however good it is.
Minute 10 to 30: where they stand
For each of the names, and for your own practice, open the Google Business Profile and record a line:
| Field | What to note |
|---|---|
| Primary category | Dentist, cosmetic, pediatric, or something else |
| Services listed | Count them |
| Review count and score | Both numbers |
| Newest review date | How long ago |
| Reviews answered | Of the last ten, how many have a reply |
| Photos | Count, and whether the exterior is real |
| Hours | Evenings or Saturdays |
| Appointment link | Online booking or a phone number |
Twenty minutes for six profiles is about three minutes each, which is enough. The point is the comparison, not the detail. A competitor with 187 reviews, four new ones in the last month, 14 services listed and Saturday hours is beating you on the things Google’s own help page says matter: relevance and prominence. The ranking factors article explains those two words.
Minute 30 to 45: what they offer and charge
Open each website. Note the services with their own page, any published fees (new patient exam and X-rays, whitening, a membership plan with a monthly price), any offer on the home page, whether they take the insurance plans your patients ask about, and whether they say “accepting new patients”. Note the booking path: a form, a third-party scheduler, or “call us”.
This is the four P’s in practice. Product is the service list. Price is whatever they publish, which is often the new patient offer and the membership plan. Place is the map position you recorded. Promotion is the offer, the review pace, and whether they are running ads: search the main term once more and note who is in the sponsored slots above the map.
Record a competitor’s price only if they published it, with the date you saw it. Do not guess from a Reddit thread.
Minute 45 to 55: what they say about themselves
Read their newest ten reviews, yours as well. Not the score; the words. Patients name what they noticed: “got me in the same day”, “explained the cost before starting”, “the hygienist was gentle”, “waited 40 minutes”. Make two short columns for each practice: what gets praised and what gets complained about. In five practices you will see the same three praises and the same two complaints, and you will see which ones you own.
Minute 55 to 60: the one change
Pick the single gap that costs you most. Usually it is one of: fewer recent reviews than the top two; fewer services listed; no Saturday or evening hours shown while a competitor has them; or no online booking. Write it down with a date. Do the same hour next month and see whether it moved.
What to do with the sheet
Keep it. The second month’s sheet is where the value is, because changes show: a competitor adds Saturday hours, starts an implant offer, or their review pace doubles after they put a QR code at check-out. Each is worth knowing a month in rather than when a patient mentions it.
The sheet also feeds the Google Business Profile tips: most of what you note about competitors is something you can change on your own profile this week.
What Calibic does here
Competitor Insights (LIVE) does the middle half of this hour every week for the practices patients compare you with: rating, review pace, offers, hours and services, drawn as a profile next to yours, and a line when something changes. “They added Saturday hours. Seen this week.” Local ranking (LIVE) records where you appear for the core searches so the parking lot test becomes a chart. A street-by-street rank grid is ROADMAP.
What it does not do is read competitor websites for fees or run their reviews through anything; the published-price check is still yours. It never touches your Google profile or your practice software, which it reads without writing. See Competitor Insights, or go through the reputation management page for the review side.