SEO in 2026 so far: what we have actually seen, and what it means for your practice
With most of the year behind us, it is a good time to look back at what has actually happened in search so far in 2026. There have been some real shifts, and a few of them matter a lot for dental practices.
Here is what stood out, and what we are advising clients to do about it.
Google made several big updates, and quality mattered more than ever
This year has been busy on Google’s side, with core updates in March, May and June causing noticeable movement across local search. Home services, legal, and healthcare were among the sectors most affected.
The clearest pattern was about quality rather than page type. Location pages that add genuine local value continued to perform well, while thin, templated pages that simply swap in a town name without offering anything meaningful about the area lost ground. Google is now much better at telling the two apart.
For practices with multiple locations or lots of area pages, the lesson is to make each one genuinely useful. Real detail about the practice, the team, and the local area beats a page that could belong to any town.
Your Google Business Profile matters more than ever
One of the most concrete changes this year is how much weight Google now puts on a complete, active Google Business Profile.
What we have seen in the data:
- Practices with incomplete profiles, missing hours, services, photos, or attributes saw rankings slip
- Review recency and how quickly you respond now count for more than the raw number of reviews
- Profiles that went quiet lost visibility fast, even with strong review counts behind them
- Regular posts and fresh photos act as a signal that the practice is active
The takeaway is simple. A practice with a steady flow of recent reviews, prompt responses, and an up-to-date profile is in a much stronger position than one sitting on a big pile of older reviews and an untouched listing.
More searches are ending without a click
This has been building for a while, but the numbers this year are striking. More Google searches now end without anyone clicking through to a website. People are getting what they need directly from the results page, whether that is an AI Overview, the local map pack, review summaries, or the information panel.
For a dental practice, this is not the disaster it might sound like. It does mean that your presence on the results page itself, your listing, your rating, your reviews, and your opening hours, is doing more of the work than ever. A patient can now find your practice, see your rating, read your hours, and call you, all without visiting your site.
The practical point: the parts of your online presence that show directly in search results deserve just as much attention as the website itself.
AI Overviews are now on roughly half of searches
AI Overviews, the AI-generated answers at the top of many Google results, now appear on close to half of all searches, and far more often for informational questions like “what is a dental implant” or “does teeth whitening hurt”.
The useful thing we have learned is that being cited inside one of these answers builds trust and tends to lift branded searches for the practice. And the way to earn that citation is the same as good SEO has always been: clear, well-structured content that genuinely answers the question, from a source Google trusts.
So the informational blog content that answers real patient questions is still worth doing. It just increasingly earns its value by being the source Google quotes, rather than only by direct clicks.
Trust and real expertise keep winning
The thread running through every update this year is the same. Google is rewarding genuine experience, credible authority, and content that only a real practice could produce, while surface-level, generic content keeps losing ground.
For dental, which Google treats as a health topic and holds to a higher standard, this means:
- Named dentists with real credentials on clinical pages
- Content grounded in genuine clinical experience
- Real photos and real patient stories over stock imagery and generic copy
- A credible brand presence that extends beyond the website
Where this leaves us
From what we’ve learned so far, none of these points to panic or a complete change of approach. If anything, this year has rewarded the fundamentals: a complete and active Google Business Profile, steady recent reviews, genuinely local pages, and trustworthy content from real people.
If you would like us to review how your practice is placed against any of this, we are always happy to take a look. Call us today for a free website review!
More posts from our team
Five Star
Reviewed Marketing
"Would definitely recommend to a friend"
"I cannot recommend Dental Design highly enough"
"Really great company to deal with"
"Very professional, efficient & adaptive to new situations"
"I cannot recommend them highly enough"
"Has been invaluable and gone out of her way to help us"
"We love the look of our practice website. Very professional!"
"Dental Design stood out both in their knowledge of the industry and their professionalism"
"The team and package offered at dental design was unrivalled"
"absolutely fantastic and are always on hand to help"
"Dental Design are fantastic to work with"
"always met with a swift and professional response"
