What Google Really Wants From Your Dental Website in 2026

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Intro: You are now listening to another episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast, where we explore the various challenges faced by dental practices due to their reliance on insurance. Join us in this podcast as we dive deep into the issues surrounding dental insurance dependence and offer practical solutions and strategies to help you take control of your practice’s financial future.

Ben Tunei: Welcome to another exciting episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast. My name is Ben Tunei, and I’m one of the co-hosts on this podcast. And as y’all know, we developed these things for you to help you untangle yourselves from the big mess of insurance that we seem to be dealing with evermore constantly these days. And I have my good friend and co-host with me, Naren Arulrajah with us. Naren, how are you, my friend?

Naren Arulrajah: I’m doing great, Ben. Really happy to be here. And I know we have an interesting topic today: what Google really wants from your dental website in 2026.

Ben Tunei: Absolutely. Absolutely. So we’re gonna hit that hard. Great to be with you, Naren, and welcome back to all of our listeners today on our podcast. And so today we want to talk about that. We want to talk about something that I think every dental practice depends on. Whether you’re PPO-heavy or hybrid—meaning some insurance here or there, some doctors in-network, some out-of-network—or even aiming for that pinnacle area of practice, which is fee-for-service, the common denominator in terms of what impacts all of you is your website.

So, I hear from dentists who say they spend a ton on beautiful websites, but they’re not ranking and they’re still not getting new patients despite spending thousands and tens of thousands of dollars on their beautiful website.

So I want to dig into that. I want to dig into what Google is intending to do in 2026, and why looking isn’t just good enough anymore. Browsing the internet—that whole concept—isn’t what we should be focusing on as business owners. And so, of course, we have Naren with us today, and we’re gonna be picking Naren’s brain about this whole concept. Because if there’s a person to ask a question about what Google’s thinking for the next year, it’s gonna be Naren.

So Naren, I talk to dentists who’ve invested in beautiful and stunning websites, yet they never show up on search results when you Google a dentist in their communities. Why do so many dentists look good or have really, really amazing websites, but still fail at that whole Google game in attracting new patients?

Naren Arulrajah: You know, you’re asking a good question at a very interesting time. This episode is gonna come out soon, and we are talking about what we should do in 2026. Especially the topic is what Google really wants from your dental website in 2026.

I just want to set the stage for a little bit, right? The world is totally changing, and this is not like a "maybe it’ll change," but it’s absolutely changing. What I mean is, there’s no doubt in my mind—in 10 to 20 years from now—all white-collar jobs will be mostly done by AI or computers. And many, many, many jobs that we do with our hands also will be done by AI or computers: driving a car, writing a letter—a legal letter—doing reviews of resumes.

Naren Arulrajah: You go on and on and on—AI’s gonna do it. And Google was the first company on the planet to say "AI first." The CEO of Google said that, I think in 2017 or 2016—literally, you know, nine years ago. So they have been working at it for a long time.

In the early days when ChatGPT first came out, people thought Google was caught flatfooted. But they were not. Of course, they didn’t have something for the consumers, but behind the scenes, they had the building blocks, the technology, everything. And those of you who are paying attention to the stock market, for example, know Google’s stock price has gone up by $2 trillion in the last seven months. Two trillion dollars. Wow. It has never happened in history. Why? Google owns AI.

So if you listen carefully to the CEO of Google as to how he sees the world going, he believes that Google will be AI-powered.

So already you can go to Google and say, "dentist near me." They’ll show local dentists. You can say, "Invisalign dentist in a zip code." They will show a local dentist, they’ll show the website, they’ll show the reviews. So people already use Google 30 billion times a day. Twelve billion times they use Google Search, and five billion times they use Google Maps.

So Google is—it’s just mind-blowing—the amount we depend on, as a race, the human race, on Google and everything: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Images. You know, it’s just how we live, right?

Now, the reason Google has checkmated the whole world is: when you have people using Google 30 billion times a day, and ChatGPT is used a hundred million times a day, Google is 300 times bigger. You know what I mean, right?

So even if ChatGPT grows 10 times in one year—which is impossible to happen—Google has to grow just 10% to beat ChatGPT. Oh, I forgot YouTube, right? Which is the largest platform for videos in the world. It’s bigger than all TV stations, every other online platform, several times over.

So Google owns this world of how consumers do things, live, make decisions. So I think we really have to understand what Google is seeing and kind of optimize for that.

So Google in 2026 is rewarding people who are trying to help consumers. They’re rewarding content that feels real and helpful. Keyword stuffing, trying to rank for a particular keyword, doesn’t work anymore.

For many years, Google used something called Google Lighthouse Code. Now they have replaced it with Google CrUX. "Cr" stands for Chrome, "UX" stands for user experience.

Naren Arulrajah: So now, according to Chrome—by the way, Chrome is another app that’s used billions of times a day, which is their browser—now, according to Google, if your website is not fast to load, if your website doesn’t have the right information, if your website has information that’s not trustworthy—meaning it’s not linked to a human being, in this case, a qualified dentist who has the relevant credentials—you’re not gonna rank.

And given Google is 300 times bigger than ChatGPT and pretty much anybody else, it’s almost like there’s Google, and… Google. Even Microsoft, when it comes to search, is one-twentieth the size of Google, or one-thirtieth the size of Google. They don’t have competition. They’re like 95% of the market. They own the market, and they’re expanding and expanding.

So, two things that are helpful: pay attention to Google and where they’re going.

We have been revamping our entire team to really get ready and own the AI-first space. Already, our clients are showing up not only on regular search but on "AI Overview" mode many, many times. Still, AI Overview mode is only about 3% of total search volume—out of the 30 billion—but it’s growing pretty fast. I mean, a billion is a pretty big number.

So Google is growing like gangbusters, and our job is to stay up.

Now, of course, we don’t want to ignore ChatGPT, even though ChatGPT—recently the CEO sent out a letter saying “red alert,” like they are in big trouble because Google is killing them on the business side. And also, for every dollar they make, they lose $7. So they are having a hard time justifying to all these investors why they keep losing $7. Where are they going to make a profit, or when are they going to make a profit?

So anyway, I don’t want to get into the business side of AI wars and whatnot. But I do think we need to make sure our content is useful and we’re doing everything Google wants, and we will do fine in the AI world.

So I think even this question you asked about a beautiful website—in the AI world, it’s less relevant. A lot of people don’t even have to go to websites anymore. They can get the answers right off of Google. They can find your phone number. They can even book an appointment or call your office right off of Google.

So even though the website is important to talk to Google and get Google to like you and trust you, it’s not important as a lead source. In the old days, we would tell our clients, “Look at how many visitors went to your website.” Now we’re saying, “Look at how many phone calls are you getting? How many appointments are you getting?” Because that’s what really matters. How they come—whether it’s through Google Maps or through SEO—doesn’t matter. You just want the phone calls.

So as long as your phone calls and your leads are growing from organic marketing, you’re in good shape.

Ben Tunei: That’s awesome. You know, you mentioned something there that kind of stuck out to me. And the reason why it stuck out to me is because we live in a social media, content-driven world, where you could be a successful YouTuber or a TikToker and then appear on ESPN. Like that pizza guy is doing picks on ESPN, and he’s a TikToker. You know, but he has a following, and he’s content-driven in terms of what he does.

So let’s talk about content. You had mentioned that content-driven is sort of where—at least you alluded to that—that’s where kind of Google is giving priority. Can you speak to what kinds of content Google is giving priority to these days in terms of ranking of websites?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. So Google is rewarding content that is helpful, right? See, one of the things that people are worried about when it comes to AI—especially like the new AI products like ChatGPT—it makes up nonsense. In other words, it’s not linked to an authority, it just makes it up. It puts words together.

I don’t know if you heard, but there was a person in Texas who committed suicide because this was literally encouraging him, saying, “Oh yeah, you need to do it. You should do this. You should do that.”

Ben Tunei: Yeah, I remember.

Naren Arulrajah: You remember that, right? So, sad story. And that story’s a result of it making up those words. It doesn’t understand the consequences of what it’s saying.

Google doesn’t do that. Like, if you go and do any kind of a search—let’s say you say, “Write me a letter to send to a tenant who I would like to vacate my premises because I want to move in”—Google will write the letter, and it’ll give you sources as to where it got the information from. So you don’t need to guess if it’s just made up and will get you in trouble, or, yeah, according to the law, this is what you should do, and this is what you shouldn’t do. It’ll give you the sources.

And the reason Google is able to do that is they have the biggest index and the most up-to-date index on the planet. They crawl the entire world—hundreds of billions of pages every day—to get the latest and greatest information. Nobody has millions of servers to keep up with Google.

So a lot of times I’ve had people—like, I went to Ireland, I think I used Brock and ChatGPT—and it suggested certain routes, and it suggested certain restaurants. Those restaurants don’t exist. You know why? Because they don’t update their information. So, you know, it’s like two-year-old information, three-year-old information. Yeah, it existed two years ago.

So I do think having content that is honest is good. Now, Google, in addition to putting sources, also is prioritizing—especially when it comes to healthcare—information from doctors. So including your bio and your credentials on that page now tells Google you are not only just a human being who has a mouth, but you’re also qualified to say what you’re saying.

Google will link to your webpage, and they will only link to it if, in healthcare, you are using E-E-A-T guidelines: Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trust.

So having your bio with your qualifications—what university you studied at, what degrees you have—makes a huge difference. Now, this is a huge advantage for people who know what they’re doing and who are doing all the things Google is asking.

We have been doing E-A-T for a long time, but now it’s even more important because of all this made-up nonsense from AI. And Google is like, “We don’t do that. We will give you information—of course, we’re going to write it for you, make your life easier like all the other AI platforms—but we will give you the source, and the source will be a real doctor.”

So one of the questions I get asked is: “Where should I get CE?” If you’re getting CE from a university, that in Google’s eyes is better than CE from a no-name person who’s doing a weekend class.

So keep getting CE from established institutions. Keep highlighting that information, including your degrees properly. Again, you need to have technical people who know how to do it properly. And we have been doing it for six, seven years now, and now we are doubling down—because in the AI world, it’s even more important.

Yeah, now focus on doing the right thing. And Google keeps saying that—help your customers, do the right thing, give them the right information, make sure it’s linked to authority, and we’ll take care of you.

Ben Tunei: Yeah, I like that. What about credibility, Naren? It seems like, you know, this is a huge part when it comes to professional services in the world of medicine. How does Google decide whether a dental site is actually trustworthy in order to improve its ranking?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, that’s a great, great question. So, you know, I kind of alluded to it in my last answer. Google uses EEAT—Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. And you have a degree. You have a DDS, right? You have a degree that you can mention. You can mention the university you went to. You can mention a link to your license. You can mention when you graduated.

So this tells Google you are qualified to talk about dentistry. So you really need to—this is a great time, if you know what you’re doing—to really stand out.

Of course, just doing EEAT and ignoring everything else Google is telling you, like the rest of CrUX, is not gonna get you to rank. But if you also pay attention to EEAT in addition to CrUX, have these bios—even including reviews is powerful, right? Having a Google review that’s linked from your relevant pages, having relevant cases, having videos where you explain things, again all linked with your bio—these are all very powerful techniques.

I think where people get tripped up is it’s very technical. So if you don’t do it exactly the way Google wants, you won’t rank. You won’t get the benefit.

Ben Tunei: Yeah, no, I think that’s awesome how you answered that question. You often think about how credibility ties into an individual or a business’s ranking on Google and whether it would score well. And I always think—dentists are licensed. They’re top-tier professionals. But there’s a lot of them, you know, around the world and in the country. So… but I get what you’re saying. Yeah, go ahead.

Naren Arulrajah: Go ahead. I was talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a dentist, and he said something really interesting. He said in dentistry, even though you are a really bad businessperson, you won’t go out of business. Why? Because to be a dentist, you have to have a degree, you have to have accreditation—versus anybody can open up a med spa, anybody can open up a beauty clinic, anybody can open up a hair salon.

You can’t do that in dentistry. There’s only a limited number of people, and there’s more demand than supply.

So—but the same thing applies to Google. Even though when you look at that EEAT, we have done some studies on it—less than 10% of practices know how to do EEAT well, so they don’t get any benefit.

Ben Tunei: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, I think about that all the time. Especially, I have endodontist clients, and, you know, to me, when I look at an endodontist, they have a license to print money. When you look at their margins—and they do a little bit of this here and there to kind of improve their visibility, especially among referring doctors—it just makes a big world of difference for them.

But I—what about, you know, I’m thinking about our conversation here, Naren, on different angles of 2026. What about mobile experience? I’m kind of hearing that’s where marketers should focus a lot on because… well, well, I guess I should ask you—why? Why is mobile performance so critical for this upcoming year in 2026 and beyond?

Naren Arulrajah: I mean, every year the amount of time we spend on mobile devices keeps going up and up and up. So today, more than two-thirds in North America of time—and how we use Google—is on mobile, right? We use Google Search on mobile. We use Google Maps and Google Photos on mobile. We use Gmail on mobile. So that’s kind of where it’s at.

Of course, Google owns Android—another product that’s used by 4 billion people. Like, Google owns products that literally have 4 to 5 billion users. It’s just unreal. And of course, even on Apple, Chrome is the number one browser. I think they paid Apple like $10 billion a year just to make sure it’s the number one browser and the number one app on the Apple iOS operating system.

So, mobile is important. It is where people are spending more time. So you want to make sure your website is optimized for mobile. For example, if your website is slow to open on a mobile device—remember, mobile means they could be coming from fast networks, low networks, old phones, new phones, big screens, small screens—your website should be optimized for every one of those: every network, every type of device, every screen size, every type of technology.

So learning how to do that—of course, we’ve been doing this for like seven, eight years now because mobile is not new—it’s just getting more and more important. Making sure it’s fast, making sure the layouts are optimized for the screen size. And there are different technologies we use behind the scenes.

A good thing about Google is Google tells you what to do and what not to do. They’ll give you tools you can use to see what you’re doing well and what you’re not doing well. But then you have to fix all these things. And as Google changes its mind and changes its standards, you have to stay up.

So, for example, we have a 30% team of webmasters, and that’s all they do. They keep up with Google’s standards for mobile and desktop, and of course, CrUX is part of that.

Ben Tunei: Hmm. I love that. I love that, Naren. Well, this is so excellent. As I’m kind of unpacking everything that you’re saying, I want to bring it all together now. When we’re talking about website performance and patient experience—which to me kind of sound like two different things—but when you look at them, how do those two things—website performance and patient experience—influence each other and create good results for dental practices that are looking to boost their patient flow?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, that’s a great, great question. See, they’re tightly connected, right? Everything works together. Patients leave slow websites. They leave confusing websites. They leave websites that don’t have clear call-to-actions.

Today I had a conversation with a client—he just became a new client—and he’s getting 30 new patient calls. He’s, of course, a great dentist. He already had like 400 reviews and 4.9 stars. But it’s like night and day. He was getting seven new patients, and now 30 new patients. Why? He’s getting tons of calls for sedation and implants—things he used to do that he was not ranking for. Now he’s ranking for them. Of course, the phone is ringing.

Now what he needs to work on is conversion rate—how many of them are booking appointments. Even things like call buttons and making it easy.

And tracking how many calls you’re getting—he’s getting a total of 180 calls, and of course, 30 of them are new patient calls.

We talked about trust, right? How do you create trust? EEAT. Including your bios, including Google reviews. Your website is the first impression. Now, many times they will directly call you from Google Maps or from Google AI Overview. It doesn’t matter, right? You just want the phone to ring.

And as long as you’re getting more phone calls and more new patients, that’s what you need to measure. That’s the metric you should be focused on. But you can look at some of the underlying metrics—how many keywords am I ranking for? How many people are seeing me on Google? Yes. How many people are even going to my website? Even though we know they don’t have to go to your website to call you or to book an appointment with you.

Ben Tunei: Yeah. I love that, Naren. All this information is so amazing. And if I’m listening to this stuff and resonating with it, I imagine a lot of listeners would realize that the websites they have might be beautiful, but in terms of how it’s performing, it might not be doing what they want.

So what do you recommend in terms of where a doctor should start to enhance their journey with this idea of being more visible to the community by utilizing this big, great tool called Google?

Naren Arulrajah: You know, start by getting an audit, right? Try to understand where you are, where you need to go. Because if you don’t know where you are and where you need to go, you’re gonna keep getting lost, right?

If you want 2026 to be different from every other year, that’s where you start.

So one of the things we offer is what we call a Marketing Strategy Meeting, where we do an audit. We will tell you how you’re doing on SEO, we’ll tell you how you’re doing with AI search. We’ll tell you if your website is loading fast, if you’re using EEAT.

So get that audit done, and then come up with a plan. Again, we provide a plan—a 12-month plan—to dominate Google, to get into that top 5% of practice owners who are getting 95% of the exposure, especially the unpaid or free exposure. Meaning things you’re getting without having to pay money on Google Ads.

So that’s where I would start. The link for that is insuranceuntangled.com/msm. 

Once you have that meeting and you know where you need to start, then take the necessary steps—whether you’re with us or somebody else. Start addressing those things. Try to figure out how you’re going to get to the top 5% and rank for 400 keywords, and start taking action.

Ben Tunei: Wonderful. I highly recommend that. We’ve had nothing but great reviews and great experiences among my own clientele and friends with regards to that Marketing Strategy Meeting. So thank you, Naren, for being so generous and willing to offer that to our listeners. I really appreciate that.

And thank you for your wisdom today. We’re gonna wrap things up because this has been great. We’ll leave y’all with some things to think about and some tools and tips for you to implement.

So thank you, Naren. And I want to take a minute to thank our listeners for joining us today on another amazing episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast.

Don’t forget to share this with your friends on social media or any other platform that you use. And also, your reviews will help boost what we’re trying to do—the mission that we’re trying to achieve—to help untangle practices from this whole area of insurance.

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Until we meet next time again, folks, we wish all of you the best of success. Take care now.