As digital marketing has evolved and Google has become the 800 pound gorilla, there have been a number of evolutions that impact businesses, including your practice. One of them is the need for absolute clarity in the “eyes” of Google so that they know who and what to recommend to their users who search for dental services.
Your NAP–Name, Address & Phone Number–must match everywhere.
A failure to provide this clarity is penalized with poor visibility online in the Google maps, in organic rankings, in who sees Google ads and most importantly in any type of AI query.
It is imperative that there be consistency across the board for your practice to rank, be seen and recommended.
In addition, last year in a number of 2025 Google core updates, this issue was compounded because Google prioritized understanding of the business based on consistency of information across the internet. Google uses the term “entities” to define the data that needs to be made clear in order to be recommended in search results. It is less about “keyword search” and more about what a user is actually looking for as Google responds to the user based on what Google believes the user most wants. This makes the need for complete clarity about what services you provide and who you serve more important than ever, to the point where confusion about that will be heavily penalized by simply not being recommended–in other words, online invisibility.
When we analyze metrics from practice to practice, we can determine that often the results don’t match the efforts that are underway. As we dig deeper, invariably we find NAP inconsistencies.
Think of it this way. In order to recommend you Google must know:
- What your practice is.
- The correct address.
- The correct phone number.
- What the proper office hours are.
And so on.
In other words, Google, as the gatekeeper to online visibility, if confused about any of these, will penalize you by making it really hard for patients to find you.
The overall result is that if you have outdated information, especially on authoritative third party websites, Google’s entity understanding is not optimal and this will contribute to poor visibility. Google pays attention to sites such as the BBB listings and the NPI registry that can’t be easily changed without providing proof from the business and, because of that, are weighted as authoritative.
The bottom line is that Google has a critical internal database called the Google Knowledge Graph. This database stores everything that Google knows about businesses. It does so by identifying all known facts and aspects of a business and building a Google “Entity” about the business. Although this Google Entity has existed for quite some time, it has become increasingly important because it drives Google’s AI Overview listings–and this extends to other AI engines that pull from Google’s data.
Without question, outdated information on authoritative websites will affect Google’s entity understanding in the Google knowledge graph and damage your visibility.
The good news is that this is fixable–though not easy. Some of those sites will require proof of any change you need to make. The key is to identify any and all NAP inconsistencies and correct them as soon as possible.
Let’s end on some good news.
The reality is that almost everyone has NAP inconsistencies yet very few practices are aware of this. Therefore, if you correct yours, you will be rewarded by Google, your online visibility will increase and your competitors will never even know that this happened.