Editorial policy

Every practice gets a score out of 100. Three things go into it, weighted as below. These numbers are read directly from the code that performs the ranking, so what you are reading here is what actually ran.

The arithmetic

For anyone who wants the specifics:

• Bayesian rating. A practice's rating is blended with the assumed average across all listed practices (4.4), weighted as though that average were worth 20 reviews. A practice with 20 reviews therefore sits halfway between the average and its own raw rating; one with several hundred sits very close to its own.
• Review confidence. That blended rating is then multiplied by a confidence factor on a log scale, reaching its maximum at 200 reviews and never falling below 50%. A good practice with few reviews is discounted, not buried.
• Verified coverage. The number of treatments we have verified the practice offers, divided by 8 and capped at 1. Claims we have not verified count for nothing.
• Profile completeness. A score out of 100 across 17 fields — description, photos, contact details, hours, insurance, financing, languages, sedation, technology and treatments listed.

Weights: 60% rating, 20% verified coverage, 20% completeness.

A practice with no rating at all scores zero on the rating component rather than being treated as average. Being unrated is a genuine gap in the evidence, not a neutral position.

Practices can pay to be Featured. Here is exactly what that does:

• It changes list order on directory pages. Featured practices appear above the ranked list on city hubs, treatment pages, provider-type pages and insurance pages.
• It is always labelled. Wherever a Featured practice is placed by payment rather than by score, it carries a visible "Featured" badge.
• It gives a followed outbound link to the practice's own website. Non-Featured listings link out with rel="nofollow".

And here is what it does not do:

• It has no effect on our best-of rankings. Thebest-dentists and best-cosmetic-dentists pages are sorted on score alone. A Featured practice appears there only if its score puts it there. In the code these are two separate functions, and the editorial one never receives the Featured flag.
• It does not change a practice's score.
• It does not affect what we write. Market notes and editorial copy are written without reference to who is paying.

A programmatic directory can generate an unlimited number of pages. That is exactly why it needs a floor. We publish a page only when there is enough behind it to be worth landing on:

• A city and treatment combination needs at least 3 local practices offering that treatment.
• A provider-type page needs at least 3 practices of that type in the city.
• An insurance page needs at least 5 practices in the city accepting that plan.

Below those thresholds the page is not generated at all. It is not published thin, and it is not left in a sitemap to rot.

• Practice details come from public sources — the NPI registry, business listings and practices' own websites — and from practices themselves once they claim a listing.
• Ratings and review counts are shown as published by Google at the time we last refreshed them. We do not host, verify, moderate or edit reviews, we always link back to the source, and we never mark them up as our own rating data.
• Cost ranges are published only where we can point at where the figure came from. Where we do not have a sourced figure, we say pricing varies rather than estimating one.

We do not invent practice details, ratings, prices or statistics. If a figure is not sourced, it does not go on the page.

If something about your practice is wrong, or you think a ranking is mistaken, email hello@thetoothdirectory.com. Corrections to factual errors are free and always will be — they are not a reason to sell anyone a listing.