How often should a dental practice website be checked?

Once a month is enough if nothing in the practice changes. Check immediately after any change to hours, staff or services.

Do old hygiene notices count as outdated content?

Yes. A note written for a phase that has ended reads to patients as if the site has not been touched in years, even if the rest of the page is current.

Is it worth mentioning discontinued services at all?

Only if you replace the mention with what you offer instead. A stray reference to a treatment you no longer provide invites enquiries you then have to decline.

Should the team page list every past staff member?

No. Keep it to the people currently seeing patients. A short, accurate page beats a long one with names nobody can call anymore.

Website upkeep for dental practices: what goes stale first

On dental practice websites, opening hours, holiday cover notices and the team page fall out of date first, followed by services that are no longer offered and hygiene notes from an earlier phase. A short monthly look at these three pages avoids most of the trouble patients run into.

August 5, 2026

See what's still from last year on your site

Enter your address and get the result right on this page. Free for one website, always.

No account, no credit card. Takes a minute.

So geht es

1Enter your address. Type your practice website address into the field.
2Let us look. DustOff reads the visible text on your main pages.
3Read the result. Every dusty passage appears with an excerpt and a short reason.
4Get reminded. Add your email so DustOff keeps checking on a rhythm you choose.

Where the dust settles on a practice site

A patient rarely reads the whole site. They check three things: are you open, who will see them, and how do they book. The pages that answer those questions are also the ones nobody reopens once the site is live, which is exactly why they age quietly.

Opening hours that no longer match a schedule change
Holiday cover notices left up from last year
Team pages showing colleagues who left months ago
Services listed that the practice stopped offering
Hygiene or precaution notes written for an earlier phase

Why patients notice before you do

Someone who drives to a locked door because the hours page still says yesterday's schedule does not usually call to complain. They just find another practice. Nobody reports the missed appointment; the website simply stops working for that one visitor, silently.

The team page carries similar weight. A parent choosing a children's dentist often picks based on a face they recognised from a friend's recommendation — if that person left the practice a year ago, the first conversation starts on the wrong foot.

The first fix, and what comes after

Put opening hours, holiday notices and the team page on a short list that gets checked after every real change in the practice, not once a year. Three pages, not thirty — that is what makes the habit stick.

Once that habit exists, a regular outside look covers the rest: DustOff reads the visible text on your site, compares it with today's date, and reports only what genuinely no longer holds.

What tends to slip through even careful teams

Downloadable forms and PDF information sheets often keep an old year in the filename or in the printed date, long after the page around them was updated. New-patient paperwork is worth a yearly check for exactly this reason.

Booking widgets sometimes still list a service that was discontinued, even after the main services page was corrected, because the two are maintained in different places by different people.

Häufige Fragen

How often should a dental practice website be checked?: Once a month is enough if nothing in the practice changes. Check immediately after any change to hours, staff or services.
Do old hygiene notices count as outdated content?: Yes. A note written for a phase that has ended reads to patients as if the site has not been touched in years, even if the rest of the page is current.
Is it worth mentioning discontinued services at all?: Only if you replace the mention with what you offer instead. A stray reference to a treatment you no longer provide invites enquiries you then have to decline.
Should the team page list every past staff member?: No. Keep it to the people currently seeing patients. A short, accurate page beats a long one with names nobody can call anymore.