We audited 45 NZ dental websites. 70% had an issue.

Why run this study at all?

Because the rules changed recently and nobody had measured what happened next.

The ASA Therapeutic and Health Advertising Code applied to new advertising from 1 April 2026 and to all advertising from 1 July 2026. That is a substantial change to what a New Zealand dental practice may publish, and it arrived about ten weeks before we ran this audit.

Alongside it sits the Dental Council's Advertising Practice Standard, which has been in force since September 2020 and which carries a provision most practices have never read: you are responsible for the form and content of your advertising, and you cannot delegate that responsibility.

Similar audits exist in other markets. Peer-reviewed work has found 72% of a representative sample of Australian chiropractors in breach, and 11% full compliance among UK websites advertising aligner therapy. Nothing equivalent existed for New Zealand dentistry.

How was the sample selected?

By a rule rather than by judgement, so anyone can reproduce it.

We searched for dentist in each of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and took the first 15 distinct dental practices in each city that had their own website. Directories, aggregators and listings without a practice website were skipped, as were purely specialist referral centres.

That gave 45 practices. Two websites would not load when we came to audit them, so the findings below are reported against 43.

This is a purposive sample, not a statistically representative one. We are not claiming these figures describe every dental practice in New Zealand. They describe what a patient searching in the three largest cities would encounter.

What did we measure?

Five criteria, each tied to a specific published rule rather than to our opinion about what looks bad. A finding was recorded only where the breach was clearly present and the wording could be quoted.

What did we find?

Seventy per cent of the sites that loaded carried at least one issue. Thirty per cent were clean on all five criteria, which is worth stating as plainly as the headline, because it is the part that makes the rest credible.

How severe were the problems?

Mostly a single issue rather than a pattern of them, which suggests these are oversights rather than deliberate overreach.

Thirteen practices had none. Fifteen had exactly one. Seven had two. Four had three, three had four, and one practice breached all five criteria.

The distribution matters for how you read the headline. Seventy per cent sounds like an industry with a compliance problem. The severity spread suggests something more ordinary: websites written before the rules changed, by people who were not thinking about the rules at all.

Auckland ran higher than the other two cities, with 12 of 13 reachable sites carrying an issue against 9 of 15 in each of Wellington and Christchurch. We report that rather than smoothing it, though with samples this small the difference should not be leaned on.

What does the superlative problem look like?

It is the most common issue and the easiest to fix, which is an unusual combination.

One practice described itself as a premier provider and a 5 Star Rated Christchurch Dentist with nothing offered in support. Another opened with the claim that it is a leading Christchurch dental practice. A third carried Top Rated and Cheapest Dentist in Auckland in its page title.

None of these required a marketing decision anyone would remember making. They are the default vocabulary of service-business copy, and they are also claims in the regulatory sense, which means they need substantiation.

One practice we audited had the phrase Best dentist I have ever been to on its site, in a published patient review. We recorded that as compliant rather than a breach, because those were the patient's words rather than the practice's claim about itself. That distinction is the one that decides a lot of these cases.

Which finding was most surprising?

How far the treatment claims travelled from dentistry.

Nine practices made claims about conditions beyond the mouth with no evidence cited. One linked oral health to heart disease and diabetes risk in its opening paragraph. Another stated that a device significantly reduces snoring and sleep apnoea in most people. A third built a page around mouth breathing, attributing to it poor sleep, impaired concentration, bad posture and chronic neck and back pain.

The ASA is specific about how such a claim may be substantiated. It accepts two main routes: funding by ACC or a private insurer, or published peer-reviewed scientific evidence. Neither appeared on any of the pages in question.

This is the category where the gap between marketing instinct and regulatory position is widest. Explaining that your treatment helps with something bigger than teeth is compelling. It is also the claim most likely to require evidence you do not have.

What does this study not show?

Several things, and they are worth stating before anyone quotes the headline back at us.

• This is a purposive sample of 45 practices in three cities, not a representative sample of New Zealand dentistry. The figures describe what we found, not what the sector as a whole looks like.
• Two sites did not load, so the denominator is 43. We have not substituted replacements.
• Every assessment was made from outside. A practice may hold written consent for images or evidence for a claim without publishing either, and our method cannot see that.
• A finding is not a determination of breach. Only the Dental Council or the ASA can reach one, and several of these criteria involve judgement at the margin.
• The audit was conducted in September 2026. Websites change.
• We audited websites, not Google Business Profiles, so the profile field where several of these rules also apply was outside scope for this round.

What should a practice do about it?

The remediation is smaller than the headline suggests. Most of what we found takes an afternoon.

• Search your own site for best, leading, premier, top rated and number one. That single pass addresses the most common issue we found.
• Read your testimonials and separate the ones about service from the ones about outcomes. Service comments are fine. Healing, fixing and curing are the words to watch.
• Check every use of specialist and specialising against the scopes New Zealand actually recognises. Implantology and cosmetic dentistry are named in the standard as areas where it does not apply.
• Add a typicality and consent statement wherever before-and-after images appear, not only on your main gallery page.
• Find any claim that reaches beyond the mouth, and either cite what supports it or remove it.
• Remember the Dental Council's position that you cannot delegate responsibility for your advertising. If an agency wrote it, it is still yours.