Two rulebooks, and you answer to both
If you own a UK practice, anything that promotes it sits under two sets of rules. The General Dental Council (GDC) regulates you as a registrant, and standard 1.3.3 says your advertising must be accurate, not misleading and in line with its guidance on advertising. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) enforces the CAP Code, the UK's rulebook for ads, against the ad itself. Section 12 of that code covers treatments, and it expects ads to follow professional bodies' codes as well.
The consequences differ. The GDC says misleading advertising is unprofessional, can lead to a fitness to practise investigation and can be a criminal offence. The ASA publishes its rulings every Wednesday, with the advertiser's name on them. Getting through one regime doesn't clear you with the other.
The GDC rule that catches associates out: if you, your practice or anywhere you work puts out information with your name on it, you're responsible for checking it's correct. An associate named on a principal's website owns the accuracy of that page too.
One change to watch. The GDC has consulted on replacing the Standards for the Dental Team with a Framework for Professionalism, and says the aim isn't to lower what's expected. The consultation closed on 31 August 2026. As of 5 November 2026 we couldn't find a published outcome, so this guide uses the current standards and advertising guidance. Recheck them before you rely on a standard number.
What your website has to show
This is the most checkable part of the guidance, and the part sites most often fail. A British Dental Journal study from 2023 assessed the first 100 UK orthodontic websites Google returned for aligners and braces, and only 11% fully complied. A link to the GDC, the date last updated and the complaints policy were among the items it found weren't commonly provided. That's one sample of aligner sites, not every practice, but it takes ten minutes to check yours.
All of this comes from the GDC's guidance:
| What must be shown | Where it usually fits |
|---|---|
| Practice name and the geographic address where care is given | Footer and contact page |
| Contact details, including email and telephone | Footer and contact page |
| The GDC's address and contact details, or a link to its website | Footer |
| Your complaints procedure, plus who patients can go to next: the relevant NHS body for NHS care, the Dental Complaints Service for private care | A complaints page linked from the footer |
| The date the website was last updated | Footer |
| For each dental professional named as providing care: qualification, the country it came from and GDC number | Team page, and any treatment page that names them |
| Whether the practice is NHS, mixed or wholly private (this applies to ads and other publicity too) | Home page and fees page |
| Team and services that match reality, updated regularly | Team and treatment pages |
Your GDC number also belongs on other material that names you. The guidance says any information containing your name, so that's leaflets and social posts as well as the team page.
If you're in England, don't add a CQC rating to the list. The CQC says primary dental services are exempt from its ratings, although registered providers can use its "Regulated by" graphics. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own regulators, so check with yours.
Titles: where good practices get caught
The rule is short. A dentist on a GDC specialist list can use "specialist" or "specialist in". A dentist who isn't must not use titles implying that status, such as orthodontist, periodontist or endodontist, and must not say they're "specialising in" a treatment. They can say "special interest in", "experienced in" or "practice limited to". Patients can check the register, and so can a competitor.
Implants are the trap. The GDC's 13 specialty curricula don't include implantology, and the Dental Defence Union names "implantologist" as a common error and a title the GDC doesn't recognise. So "implant specialist" on a general dentist's page is a problem however many implants they've placed. "Cosmetic dentist" isn't on that list either, so ask your indemnity provider before using it as a title.
Dental care professionals have no specialist lists at all, and the GDC gives "smile specialist" and "denture specialist" as wording to avoid. It also says not to show memberships, fellowships or honorary degrees as abbreviated letters after a name, because patients may read them as qualifications. Write them out.
The guidance also bars information comparing one dental professional's skills or qualifications with another's. That's why "the best implant dentist in Leeds" fails twice: it reads as a comparison, and it's a claim you'd need evidence for under CAP rule 3.7. Rule 3.2 tolerates obvious exaggeration if it doesn't mislead, but that's no help with the GDC.
Then there's "Dr". The ASA understands the GDC lets registrants use it as a courtesy title, yet it ruled against a registered specialist's website in 2013 because the title wasn't qualified. CAP's advice is that dropping the title is the simplest route. If you keep it, say close to the name that it's a courtesy title and that you don't hold a general medical qualification. Its 2018 notice offers "Jane Smith BDS" as the plain alternative.
Claims: what you can say about treatment
The GDC asks for clear language, claims backed by facts, no ambiguous statements and nothing likely to create an unjustified expectation of results. The CAP Code makes that concrete: hold documentary evidence before the ad runs (rule 3.7), don't exaggerate what a treatment can do (rule 3.11), and back objective health claims with evidence, if relevant from trials on people (rule 12.1). Here are made-up examples of wording to avoid:
| Made-up wording | Why it's a problem |
|---|---|
| "Pain-free implants, guaranteed" | Rule 12.9 requires proof before you suggest something is guaranteed to work, absolutely safe or without side-effects. |
| "Straight teeth twice as fast as braces, with less pain" | CAP's 2018 enforcement notice says "faster" and "less painful" need high-quality human trials, which it said it had yet to see. |
| "Book by Friday: offer ends at midnight" on an implant page | CAP says countdown clocks and "hurry" claims shouldn't be used for cosmetic surgery, because they rush a big decision. That advice isn't written about implants, but it's the safe reading for any invasive treatment. |
| "Book your Botox today" | Prescription-only medicines can't be advertised to the public (rule 12.12). CAP says a reference to a consultation on the area of treatment is likely to be acceptable. |
Rule 12.3 adds that practitioners must have relevant, recognised qualifications, that the ASA can ask who supervises and gives a treatment, and that you should encourage people to take independent advice before significant or physically invasive treatment. A line on your implant page does that.
Social media has a GDC rule of its own. If you promote services on sites such as Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Groupon or X, you must make clear the treatment may not suit every patient and depends on a satisfactory assessment. That's easy to forget on a short video, so put it in your caption template.
Before-and-after photos
You can use them. You'll find guides online saying they're banned, which isn't what the ASA says, except for prescription-only treatments, where CAP says to avoid them. CAP treats them like testimonials, so rules 3.47 to 3.50 apply, and its dental advice says they must be genuine and representative, with signed and dated proof. In practice, keep this for every image:
- Signed, dated proof that the photos are genuine and haven't been manipulated.
- The patient's permission to use them in marketing, and their contact details.
- Evidence the result is reasonably representative of what most patients can expect, not your one best case.
- A consent record that meets GDC standard 4.2.7: you explained how the image will be used, checked they understood, recorded their consent and told them they can withdraw it at any time. The social media guidance adds that you should say where it will appear.
The Dental Suite ruling from 2017 shows what good evidence looks like. A complainant challenged same-day implant photos in a press ad. The practice supplied the patient's consent form, X-rays, his signed statement and 12 more before-and-after sets from other patients, and confirmed no retouching. The complaint wasn't upheld.
Two traps. A disclaimer won't rescue you: CAP says an ad that's misleading stays misleading whatever you add to it, and unlabelled pairs of photos still count as implied claims. And consent can be withdrawn, so you need to know every place a photo appears, including Google and Instagram.
Reviews and testimonials on your own site
The law on fake reviews changed on 6 April 2025, under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. CAP rules 3.44 to 3.46, added to reflect it, ban fake reviews, require incentivised ones to be made clear, and ban publishing reviews in a misleading way. The examples include leaving out negative reviews while publishing positive ones, or giving positives more prominence. So a home page carousel that only shows five stars needs a second look. So does a headline score: the ASA upheld complaints in October 2026 against an advertiser whose site showed a better rating and more reviews than its Trustpilot profile did.
Don't pay or reward anyone for a review, in money, discounts or free treatment. Google strictly prohibits it, whatever you disclose. The CMA's short guide also says businesses that publish reviews should take proportionate steps against fake ones and have a published policy, so add a short one if you display reviews.
Quoting a patient as a testimonial means holding evidence it's genuine, their contact details and their permission (rules 3.47 and 3.50). Any factual claim inside the quote is treated like your own claim (rule 3.49). The GDC's advertising guidance doesn't mention testimonials, but standard 4.2 still applies to what you publish about a patient. Replying to reviews on Google is its own problem, covered in our guide to dental Google reviews.
A one-hour check of your own marketing
- Tick your footer off against the table above, including the last-updated date.
- Read your team page against the GDC register: names, GDC numbers, qualifications and country, and anyone who has left.
- Search the site for specialist, specialising, expert, best, guaranteed, pain-free and permanent. Read each one in context.
- List every before-and-after photo and find its signed proof. No proof, take it down until you have it.
- Look at how reviews appear on the site, and whether any score you quote matches its source.
- Check your last ten social posts for the assessment line and your GDC number.
For a specific ad, CAP's 2018 notice points to its Copy Advice team for free, confidential advice on non-broadcast ads, and your indemnity provider can look at anything with your name on it.
Once the rules are right, the rest is ordinary SEO for a dental practice, covered in what dental SEO services should include and marketing for dentists. Sojig, our product, checks your site every week and drafts fixes for a person to approve, and it's priced in US dollars. It isn't a compliance review, though. It doesn't know who's on a specialist list or what proof you hold, so the check above stays with you.