Case study
A Phoenix pediatric dental practice recovered $46K in projected revenue after 4 fake reviews came down
Star rating climbed from 4.1 to 4.6 in 14 days. The competitor’s spouse who left the fake reviews never realized why they disappeared.
The situation
A 6-year-old pediatric dental practice with a competitor problem
The practice owner is a pediatric dentist who built her single-location clinic over 6 years. Strong word-of-mouth, school-district referrals, a Google rating that sat between 4.6 and 4.8 for most of 2024.
In late January 2026, a competing pediatric practice opened 1.4 miles away. Within three weeks, five new 1-star reviews appeared on our customer’s Google listing. Each was vague (“Terrible experience,” “Would not recommend,” “Worst dental visit ever”). None mentioned a real provider name, procedure, or visit detail. Three of the five reviewer accounts had been created within the last 60 days. Two had reviewed the new competing practice with 5 stars in the same week.
The star rating dropped from 4.6 to 4.1. New patient inquiries from Google dropped ~31% week-over-week (per the customer’s CallRail data). The owner found us via our 2026 comparison page while searching for “Google review removal dental.”
What we did
Mapped each review to a Google policy category, built evidence, filed
Audit (day 1)
Ran our standard audit on her last 200 reviews. Five reviews flagged for likely policy violations. The other 195 were genuine customer feedback (we said so out loud, including the legitimate 3-star ones).
Evidence packets (days 2–3)
Built a packet per review:
- 3 reviews mapped to 'Conflict of interest' — reviewers had positively reviewed the new competing practice within 7 days
- 1 review mapped to 'Not a customer / off-topic' — reviewer account had no transaction signals and the review described services the practice doesn't offer (adult restorative work at a pediatric clinic)
- 1 review mapped to 'Spam / fake engagement' — the reviewer account had a pattern of 1-star reviews across unrelated businesses within a 4-week window
Owner approval & filing (day 4)
Owner reviewed all five packets, approved all five for filing. Charged $149 × 5 = $745 at flag-click via LemonSqueezy with the written 90-day refund attached. Filed through Google’s policy-violation channel the same business day.
What changed
4 of 5 removed in 14 days. The 5th got a refund.
Day 6: Google removed the first conflict-of-interest review. The reviewer’s 5-star on the competing practice was the smoking gun — Google’s trust team flagged the pattern within an hour of our filing.
Day 9: Two more conflict-of-interest removals back to back.
Day 14: The not-a-customer/off-topic review came down. Star rating recovered from 4.1 to 4.6.
Day 42: The 5th filing (spam/fake engagement) was rejected by Google — the reviewer account had enough other “legitimate” reviews on other businesses that Google wouldn’t classify it as spam. We issued the $149 refund the same day under the written guarantee. The owner’s total cost: $596 for 4 removed reviews.
“The day after the third removal, my Friday morning call volume jumped. We booked 11 new-patient consults that week, which is up from 4 the week before. I had no idea one review could move the needle that much.” — practice owner, quoted with written consent
By the numbers
The math, end-to-end
Reviews filed
5
Reviews removed
4
Days to first removal
6
Days to final removal
14
Starting rating
4.1
Ending rating
4.6
Projected revenue recovered
$46,000
Filing cost
$596
How we sized the revenue recovery: In the 6 weeks before the fake reviews, the practice averaged 28 new-patient inquiries/week from Google (CallRail). In the 3 weeks of the active campaign, that dropped to 19/week. After removals, it recovered to 27/week.
At a typical pediatric-dental new-patient LTV of $1,840 (industry average, ADA 2024), the 4 weeks of recovered inquiry volume map to roughly $46,000 in projected lifetime revenue that would have gone to a competitor.
For dental practices specifically
Why dental review removal works as well as it does
Dental reviews have a structural advantage in policy-channel removal: most legitimate dental reviews mention a procedure, a provider name, or a visit detail (cleanings, fillings, kids’ first visits). Fake competitor reviews almost never do, because the reviewer never sat in the chair. That asymmetry shows up cleanly to Google’s trust team and is one reason dental verticals see the highest first-pass approval rates in our internal data.
If you run a single-location or multi-location dental practice, the workflow here (audit → policy mapping → evidence packet → filing) maps 1:1 to your situation. The starting question is just: which of your last 200 reviews are real, and which aren’t.
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Methodology
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Pricing
$149 per success, full refund if Google rejects.
FAQ
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