A dental listing in this catchment carries a median of 335 Google reviews, and the three most-reviewed dental listings we read hold 918, 903 and 859 between them. The orthodontic read is a different shape on depth: a median of 112, with its three biggest listings at 819, 433 and 316. Both sets came from the same search, and both were read 20 businesses deep.
Of the dental practices we read, the ones answering the most of their recent reviews are these. Lake Minnetonka Dental answered 10 of its last 10, on a listing holding 771 reviews. Blue Ridge Dental Center: Minnetonka answered 9 of its last 10, with 903. Glen Lake Family Dentistry answered 9 of its last 10. On the orthodontic side, Mint Orthodontics answered 10 of its last 10 on a listing holding 272 reviews. Glen Lake Family Dentistry turns up in that read as well, again at 9 of its last 10. Family Orthodontics answered 7 of its last 10. Those are the businesses answering the most; the rest of the twenty we read in each trade are not described by any of it.
Two windows are at work here and they are easy to merge by accident. The reply counts are drawn from each business's most recent reviews. The review counts — 335, 112, 771, 903 — are the whole listing.
We measured 53 of the businesses someone searching in Minnetonka is shown; a typical one answered 80% of its recent reviews. That figure is not this group's, and we do not know which trades those 53 came from. For contrast on how far the floor can drop: among the 20 gyms we read in the same catchment, not one had answered any of its recent reviews.
The median rating is 4.9 for both reads. A median is one figure for a whole set; it does not tell you which listing is which, and nothing on this page is ordered by stars.
What to do about it
With a file running into the hundreds, the instinct is to start at the oldest review and work forwards. Do the opposite. Our reply counts come from each business's most recent reviews, so the newest ones are where the work counts — start at the top and go backwards, and stop when you run out of time rather than when you run out of reviews.
Answer the plain positive ones as well as the difficult ones; a review that says nothing more than that the visit went fine still gives you a name and something specific to write back to. Write the replies in your own words and vary them, so that no two of them land the same way on the page. And treat it as something that recurs rather than something you finish: a single catch-up followed by silence puts the recent window back where it was, because that window keeps moving forward whether or not anyone is writing under it.
Dentists
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Minnetonka Dental | 10 of 10 | 771 | 4.8 |
| 2 | Blue Ridge Dental Center: Minnetonka | 9 of 10 | 903 | 4.9 |
| 3 | Glen Lake Family Dentistry | 9 of 10 | 818 | 5 |
Orthodontists
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mint Orthodontics | 10 of 10 | 272 | 5 |
| 2 | Glen Lake Family Dentistry | 9 of 10 | 819 | 5 |
| 3 | Family Orthodontics | 7 of 10 | 298 | 4.9 |