Dental Websites: Why You Shouldn’t Include Dental Surgery Photos

Dentists, take note: if your dentist website contains "graphic" surgery photos, you're at risk of being blocked by Google Safe Search.

The owner of one dental website complains that the filter, designed to screen out pornographic or violent images, is blocking his images.

"I personally write and publish NYCdentist.com, which offers over 2,500 pages of free content in academic dentistry. The content shows dental procedures including surgery in detail based upon visitor choices. There is NO sexual content in all 2,500 pages."

This is another important reason not to include graphic oral surgery photos on your dental practice website.

Now, I've been advising this for many years – for a completely different set of reasons – but this only further supports my point.

As a dentist, you know what oral surgery and dental treatment look like. You probably hardly even notice the blood anymore.

But your patients do not feel the same way. They will see the blood, not the beautiful teeth underneath. Their stomachs will turn. Graphic surgical images will not inspire patients to come into the dentist for treatment.

I know that everybody wants to show before and after pictures to highlight the quality of their dentistry. However, it's really not the best dental marketing idea to show bloody surgery pics.

I also don't recommend showing ugly teeth in your "before" shots. (That's my professional dental consultant advice.) It's better just to show beautiful teeth with a testimonial from the satisfied patient.

So, if you don't want to alienate potential patients, and you want your site found on the Internet, I wouldn't include any graphic surgical images.

Just as an aside: I have some experience with image filters. Historically, websites with naked babies or people in swimsuits were sometimes marked as "pornographic." Filters would scan these images and decide that there was too much flesh showing, so they would be tagged as potentially sexual. I'd wager that there's enough blood in some surgery photos to flag them as possibly violent.

Read more about internet dental marketing on the Google webmaster forum

http://www.thevisibledentist.com/ The Visible Dentist

The dialog referred to over at Google support is in regard to images, not textual content. There is a difference. Let’s hope dentists (and their webmasters) have enough common sense NOT to use sexually oriented text content on their websites!

Beyond sexual, or imagery depicting graphic violence and/or the chance your site might be filtered by the search engines, as Jim notes. there is another good reason NOT to use explicit photos of bloody dental surgery.

It’s simply a turn-off to potential patients visiting your site.

Consider other industries and their advertisements. You’d probably never see an automobile ad or TV commercial showing the factory laborer who lost an arm building that new convertible, or the grease, sweat and toil behind the car. Instead, impressive ads show new cars in glorious design and style so prospective buyers can visualize cruising in them.

Same with dentistry; few patients want to see the bloody mechanics behind the smile. Show them the possibilities.

John Barremore
Houston, TX