The footer said 2013–2020. So did the rankings.
Midtown Dental · Sacramento, CA · audited September 1, 2026
Who they are
Three-dentist midtown Sacramento practice on G Street, specialising in implants and cosmetic work with CEREC one-visit crowns, Invisalign, sedation and pediatric care.
What we verified
WordPress on a Divi child theme with a footer copyright reading '2013-2020' — roughly six years without meaningful maintenance. Blog present, before/after gallery present, financing page present. No online booking of any kind: contact page only.
The problem
An implant and cosmetic practice — the highest-value case mix in dentistry — was running on a site that had visibly stopped being updated six years ago and could not take a booking.
Content freshness is now a citation factor, not a vanity metric: AI-cited pages average 25.7% fresher than organic top-10 results, and pages left unedited for three months are markedly more likely to lose citations. A 2020 footer on a 2026 site is a machine-readable signal of abandonment, sitting on top of a case mix worth thousands per patient.
Three named doctors, CEREC, IV sedation and a live before/after gallery is real, differentiated substance — all of it stranded on a stale template.
What we did
Local health queries only return an AI Overview about 11% of the time. The AI risk to a practice is at discovery, not on the SERP — 47% of patients now research providers with AI and 36% say it changed their choice.
- Built page depth against the questions patients actually ask, not the treatments the practice sells — symptoms and decisions, because that is what gets cited.
- Held the Local Pack with a proper GBP rebuild: local health queries return an AI Overview only about 11% of the time against 93% for conditions and symptoms, so the money keywords are still a pack fight.
- Ran the Scriblr citation baseline across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews on the practice's real patient-question set, tracked weekly.
- Built review architecture as an AI input, not a vanity metric — 75% of patients refuse to book below 4.0 stars, 44% require 4.5+, and 55% have cancelled or avoided an appointment over reviews.
- Went after third-party mentions through LinkersPro, because 77% of AI citations come from sources that are not the practice's own website and 84% trace to earned media.
- Kept every clinical page current, since AI-cited content runs 25.7% fresher than the organic top ten.
Dental is the most expensive industry on Meta — $9.78 CPC and $76.71 CPL against a $1.92 / $27.66 average. So social does not run as a lead channel here. It runs as the proof engine feeding search.
- Stopped treating paid social as lead generation: dental carries the highest CPC of any industry on Meta at $9.78, roughly five times the cross-industry average, and the same money buys far more booked patients in search.
- Rebuilt social as the proof layer — cases, outcomes, team, technology — so the trust work happens before the search click, not after it.
- Ran a Reels-first cadence against the 1.8% health and wellness Instagram engagement benchmark, with static reserved for reach.
How it was sequenced
Citation baseline across four assistants, GBP rebuild, page architecture and entity cleanup.
Symptom and decision content shipped, review engine live, first off-site mention wave.
Mention velocity sustained, citation rate compounds, freshness cycle running on clinical and service pages.
Channel audit, proof-layer content system built, photo authorisations collected.
Reels-first cadence running; consultation log tagged to social source.
Proof base compounds into branded search and consultation conversion.
The numbers
These are not reported results. Midtown Dental's own reporting has not yet been reconciled against these rows — see how we define a target versus a result.
| Metric | Baseline | Target | Change | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI assistant mention rate | 4% | 24% | +20 pts | share of the practice's patient-question prompt set naming it, across 4 assistants |
| Local Pack top-3 coverage on '[treatment] near me' | 11% | 37% | +236% | share of grid points in the top 3 |
| Non-branded organic new-patient enquiries | index 100 | index 190 | +90% | indexed to engagement start = 100 |
| Instagram engagement rate | 0.6% | 1.9% | +1.3 pts | against the 1.8% health and wellness category benchmark |
Where these targets come from
| Published figure | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 47% / 36% | Patients who used AI to research providers, and who say AI influenced their final choice | rater8 Patient Choice Report (2026) |
| 11% vs 93% | AI Overview coverage: local health queries vs conditions/symptoms queries | Search Engine Land / BrightEdge (2026) |
| 75% / 44% | Patients refusing to book below 4.0 stars, and requiring 4.5+ | rater8 Patient Choice Report (2026) |
| 77% | Share of AI citations on branded queries coming from off-page sources, not the brand's own site | Omniscient Digital (23,000+ citations) (2026) |
| 25.7% | How much fresher AI-cited content is than organic top-10 (1,064 vs 1,432 days, 17M URLs) | Ahrefs (2026) |
| $76.71 CPL | Meta ads dental cost per lead, $9.78 CPC — highest CPC of any industry (avg $27.66 / $1.92) | LocaliQ (2025) |
| 1.8% / 2.3% | Health & wellness organic engagement rate, Instagram and TikTok | Dash Social (2026) |
Objections this answers
- “Patients find us by referral. Search doesn't matter for dentistry.”
- “Our competitor posts constantly and it looks like it's working.”
The proof behind every figure
These are the raw exports Midtown Dental receives, and the ones any number on this page reconciles against. Ask any agency for the equivalent.
- Scriblr prompt-set exports, before and after
- Local grid screenshots
- GBP insights
- Review dashboard
- Mention log with live third-party URLs
- Meta Ads Manager export
- Signed patient photo authorisations on file
- Engagement rate report vs category benchmark
- Consultation log with source attribution
Systems used
- Scriblr for AI citation tracking
- LinkersPro for earned mention acquisition
- M.A.R.S. for attribution from social touch to booked consultation
Questions about this engagement
An implant and cosmetic practice — the highest-value case mix in dentistry — was running on a site that had visibly stopped being updated six years ago and could not take a booking. Content freshness is now a citation factor, not a vanity metric: AI-cited pages average 25.7% fresher than organic top-10 results, and pages left unedited for three months are markedly more likely to lose citations. A 2020 footer on a 2026 site is a machine-readable signal of abandonment, sitting on top of a case mix worth thousands per patient.
Audited September 2026: WordPress on a Divi child theme with a footer copyright reading '2013-2020' — roughly six years without meaningful maintenance. Blog present, before/after gallery present, financing page present. No online booking of any kind: contact page only.
Days 0–30: Citation baseline across four assistants, GBP rebuild, page architecture and entity cleanup. Built page depth against the questions patients actually ask, not the treatments the practice sells — symptoms and decisions, because that is what gets cited. Held the Local Pack with a proper GBP rebuild: local health queries return an AI Overview only about 11% of the time against 93% for conditions and symptoms, so the money keywords are still a pack fight.
Days 0–30 — Citation baseline across four assistants, GBP rebuild, page architecture and entity cleanup. Days 31–90 — Symptom and decision content shipped, review engine live, first off-site mention wave. Days 91–180 — Mention velocity sustained, citation rate compounds, freshness cycle running on clinical and service pages. Days 0–30 — Channel audit, proof-layer content system built, photo authorisations collected. Days 31–90 — Reels-first cadence running; consultation log tagged to social source. Days 91–180 — Proof base compounds into branded search and consultation conversion.
The programme was run against four targets: AI assistant mention rate from 4% to 24% (+20 pts); Local Pack top-3 coverage on '[treatment] near me' from 11% to 37% (+236%); Non-branded organic new-patient enquiries from index 100 to index 190 (+90%); Instagram engagement rate from 0.6% to 1.9% (+1.3 pts). These are the targets the work was set and measured against, derived from the published category benchmarks cited on this page — not figures reported back from Midtown Dental's systems. Measured results replace them here as reporting is reconciled.
No, and any agency that guarantees a number is selling you something. Every benchmark on this page is published by a named third party with a live source link, and every figure we report is reconcilable against the raw exports listed under proof — the ad platform change history, the call recordings, and the client-side booking or policy export. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and it is the standard you should hold any agency to.
Midtown Dental runs at the Growth tier — $3,000/mo, covering AI SEO and Social. Tier is set by the number of markets, the number of service lines and the reporting cadence, not by hours. Scope is agreed before anything is committed.
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