State of Dental Websites in Australia

Independent performance data from 5,894 Australian dental clinic websites, measured with Google Lighthouse. Coverage grows as more clinic websites are measured; per-site measurement dates are not recorded in this dataset yet, so we don't publish a "last measured" date.

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Key findings

  • Average mobile performance score: 56.8 / 100.
  • Only 334 of 5,894 sites (5.7%) score 90+ on mobile performance.
  • 1,955 sites (33.2%) score below 50 — the "poor" band.
  • Median mobile LCP: 8.40s (target < 2.5s; p90 19.13s).
  • Median mobile TBT: 234ms (target < 200ms; p90 1,085ms).
  • Average accessibility: 85 · Best practices: 90.8 · SEO: 91.3.

Mobile performance score distribution

Poor (0–49)1,955 (33%)
Needs improvement (50–89)3,605 (61%)
Good (90–100)334 (6%)

Each clinic is scored 0–100 on mobile performance using Google Lighthouse. Scores under 50 are considered poor, 50–89 needs improvement, and 90+ is fast. Most patients find dental clinics on their phones — a slow site means more visitors give up before booking.

Core Web Vitals — lab data (Lighthouse)

Core Web Vitals are the three metrics Google treats as most important for user experience: LCP (how fast the main content loads), TBT (how responsive the page is to clicks and taps) and CLS (how much the layout shifts around while loading). Each bar plots Google's own good (green), needs-work (amber) and poor (red) thresholds for that metric on a fixed scale - it is not a spread of the measured sites. The marker is the national median, with p90 alongside it so the slow tail is still visible. Best and worst are the extremes measured and can sit far outside the bar's scale.

LCP (target &lt; 2.5s) 8.40s median · p90 19.13s
Best: 752ms Worst: 161.59s
FCP (target &lt; 1.8s) 3.29s median · p90 6.52s
Best: 752ms Worst: 31.37s
TBT (target &lt; 200ms) 234ms median · p90 1,085ms
Best: 0ms Worst: 12,789ms
CLS (target &lt; 0.1) 0.01 median · p90 0.23
Best: 0 Worst: 3.21

What Australian dental websites are built on

Technology platform detected across 5,935 clinic websites; a further 23 could not be identified and are not counted either way:

WordPress3,739 (63%%)
Unrecognised (no CMS signature matched)1,072 (18.1%%)
Wix296 (5%%)
Squarespace271 (4.6%%)
Next.js (custom)167 (2.8%%)
Webflow81 (1.4%%)
GoDaddy Builder49 (0.8%%)
SPA (React/Vite)37 (0.6%%)
Weebly32 (0.5%%)
Craft CMS30 (0.5%%)
Concrete CMS22 (0.4%%)
Shopify17 (0.3%%)

How patients book: online booking platforms

Booking method detected across 5,918 clinic websites; a further 40 could not be determined and are not counted either way — from third-party booking platforms to on-site booking pages, or no online booking at all:

No online booking3,713 (62.7%%)
Centaur746 (12.6%%)
On-site booking page562 (9.5%%)
HealthEngine320 (5.4%%)
Practi239 (4%%)
Dentally166 (2.8%%)
HotDoc136 (2.3%%)
MyHealth1st15 (0.3%%)
Calendly7 (0.1%%)
Square Appointments3 (0.1%%)
Acuity3 (0.1%%)
Setmore2 (0%%)

An on-site booking page is a booking page or form hosted on the clinic's own website (rather than a third-party platform like HotDoc or HealthEngine). No online booking means the site only offers a phone number, email address or contact form — patients can't book online.

Chat widgets on Australian dental websites

Of 5,875 clinic websites we could check, 1,907 (32.5%) have a chat widget installed - a further 83 could not be checked and are not counted either way. Most popular platforms:

Birdeye300 (5.1%%)
Podium176 (3%%)
HubSpot (chat)170 (2.9%%)
Facebook Messenger159 (2.7%%)
not chat)129 (2.2%%)
Embed (bzr.openai.com104 (1.8%%)
Elfsight104 (1.8%%)
Sprinklr87 (1.5%%)
Chat launcher (unidentified)83 (1.4%%)
Tawk.to63 (1.1%%)
Chat form (local)59 (1%%)
Smooch58 (1%%)

Each widget a site runs is counted separately, across all 5,875 websites we could check - so a site running two appears under both, and these totals read higher than the comparison table below.

📖 Read our full review: Birdeye for dental clinics — what it costs, what it does, and whether it's worth it.

Chat widgets & performance

Sites with a chat widget installed score on average 9.1 points lower on mobile performance than sites without one (50.5 vs 59.6).

These per-platform rows cover only the sites that also have a mobile performance score, and count each site's recorded platform exactly as stored (a site running two is not split) - so they read lower than the popularity list above.

GroupSitesAvg perfAvg LCPAvg TBT
No chat widget3,94959.69.93s336ms
With chat widget1,90050.511.54s731ms
Birdeye 300 48.9 —ms
Podium 175 51.7 —ms
HubSpot (chat) 169 48.8 —ms
Facebook Messenger 158 53.8 —ms
Embed (bzr.openai.com + not chat) 104 21.4 —ms
Elfsight 103 52.8 —ms
Sprinklr 87 26 —ms
Chat launcher (unidentified) 83 59.9 —ms

Per-platform figures are based on small samples and reflect correlation, not causation — chat widgets are more common on busier, marketing-heavy websites. WhatsApp text links are not counted as widgets, and clinics whose widget status we could not establish are left out of both groups.

By state

Site counts reflect how many clinics have been measured in each state so far — they track directory coverage, not the true number of clinics in the state. States where collection is further along (like NSW and QLD) naturally show higher counts.

StateSites measuredAvg performance
NSW 1,890 56.3
VIC 1,444 55.7
QLD 1,164 57.1
WA 694 57.1
SA 493 58.7
TAS 98 63.3
ACT 77 58.6
NT 29 59.4
1 60

More states are added as data collection expands.

Top performers

The fastest-scoring dental websites we have measured AND verified as live, working sites:

These rankings come from a separate verified set of 32 individually re-measured sites - not from the wider dataset behind the figures above. A clinic that is absent here has simply not been re-measured and verified yet.

Scores are from Google Lighthouse measurements on 14 September 2026. Sites that share the same rounded score are shown as one expandable group, ordered by fastest average LCP, because the difference between individual runs is within measurement noise.

Broken, parked and placeholder pages are excluded. An empty page would otherwise score perfectly, which is how a "coming soon" placeholder can outrank a real practice.

#ClinicMobile perfAvg LCPTBT
1. 100 — 13 sites · avg LCP 0.76s–1.53s · expand to see each site
#Clinic Mobile perf Avg LCP TBT
1 Australian Family Dental (Broadmeadows, VIC) 100 764ms 0ms
2 Lane Cove Orthodontics (Lane Cove, NSW) 100 778ms 0ms
3 Kincaid Medical And Dental Centre (Wagga Wagga, NSW) 100 933ms 0ms
4 JDRM Dental Care Melton Mowbray (Melton Mowbray, VIC) 100 935ms 0ms
5 Mann St Dental (Gosford, NSW) 100 1.03s 0ms
6 My Smile Doctors (Parramatta, NSW) 100 1.07s 23ms
7 Calton Hill Dental (Gympie, QLD) 100 1.08s 0ms
8 Deeragun Dental Townsville Home Of Dentistry (Deeragun, QLD) 100 1.09s 33ms
9 Happy Smiles Dentist Hornsby (Hornsby, NSW) 100 1.24s 0ms
10 The Ortho Practice (Kincumber, NSW) 100 1.45s 0ms
11 Capital Dental Care Dentist St Kilda Dental Implants Teeth Whitening Melbourne (St Kilda East, VIC) 100 1.50s 0ms
12 Pioneer Health Dental (Albany, WA) 100 1.52s 0ms
13 Oleschenko Orthodontics (Mount Gambier, SA) 100 1.53s 0ms
2. 99 — 8 sites · avg LCP 0.98s–2.06s · expand to see each site
#Clinic Mobile perf Avg LCP TBT
1 MAX Dental Clinic (Sans Souci, NSW) 99 979ms 0ms
2 My Dentist (Alderley, QLD) 99 1.27s 0ms
3 Urban Smile Orthodontics Hawthorn (Hawthorn, VIC) 99 1.28s 0ms
4 Herald Avenue Dental Centre (Willetton, WA) 99 1.37s 33ms
5 Dentistry For Life (Beecroft, NSW) 99 1.53s 0ms
6 Stirling Street Dental Clinic (Perth, WA) 99 1.66s 0ms
7 Prestons Dental (Prestons, NSW) 99 1.73s 0ms
8 Penshurst Dental (Penshurst, NSW) 99 2.06s 33ms
3. 98 — 6 sites · avg LCP 1.20s–2.33s · expand to see each site
#Clinic Mobile perf Avg LCP TBT
1 Bendigo Dental Group (Bendigo, VIC) 98 1.20s 0ms
2 Kellyville Family Dental Orthodontics Invisalign Dental Implants And Emergency Dentist Kellyville (Kellyville Ridge, NSW) 98 1.39s 0ms
3 Orthosmile Orthodontics (Bulimba, QLD) 98 1.60s 0ms
4 Oleschenko Orthodontics (Para Hills, SA) 98 1.84s 0ms
5 Summit Dental (Little Mountain, QLD) 98 1.95s 0ms
6 Beachside Orthodontics (Balgowlah, NSW) 98 2.33s 0ms
4. 97 — 2 sites · avg LCP 2.37s–2.48s · expand to see each site
#Clinic Mobile perf Avg LCP TBT
1 Melbourne Paediatric Dentistry (Ascot Vale, VIC) 97 2.37s 27ms
2 Vivaldi Smile Artisans (Sydney, NSW) 97 2.48s 0ms
5. 96 — 2 sites · avg LCP 1.13s–1.80s · expand to see each site
#Clinic Mobile perf Avg LCP TBT
1 Ferny Hills Dental (Ferny Hills, QLD) 96 1.13s 0ms
2 The Smile Studio (Bairnsdale, VIC) 96 1.80s 9ms
6. 95 — 1 site · avg LCP 2.36s · expand to see the site
#Clinic Mobile perf Avg LCP TBT
1 Orthodontics At Tamworth (Tamworth, NSW) 95 2.36s 0ms

Want these numbers for your own clinic?

This page is the national picture. We'll run the same measurements on your site - mobile speed, Core Web Vitals, chat and booking - and show you how you compare to the practices nearest you. Free, and no obligation.

Request your free website audit.

Methodology

Performance data is collected with Google Lighthouse (mobile emulation) for each clinic website in the Local Dentists Australia directory. Scores are 0–100 where 100 is best. Core Web Vitals targets follow Google's official guidance. The dataset grows as more clinic websites are measured; per-site measurement dates are not recorded yet.

The leaderboard ranks each verified clinic website on its mobile Lighthouse performance on 14 September 2026. Sites that share the same rounded score are collapsed into one expandable group rather than being given an artificial order, and the LCP shown is that site's average. A site with no measurement is not ranked, and broken, parked or placeholder pages are excluded.