How many Google reviews does a typical plastic surgery practice have?

Who this is for

This is for the physician or medical professional who owns a plastic surgery practice, or a med spa that books surgical consultations. It is also for the operations lead who asks patients for reviews and manages the practice's Google Business Profile, the listing patients see on Google Maps and in search results.

What we found

Ichelon Consulting US is a search marketing agency that sells to practices. It pulled Google Business Profile data for 874 US plastic surgery practices in 20 cities and published the results on September 29, 2026. Across those practices, the average Google rating was 4.74 stars. Ichelon uses "typical" as its own word for the 107-review count.¹

Two peer-reviewed studies found that most individual plastic surgery reviews are positive. Of course, Google bars any reward for a review, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) bars rewards tied to a positive one,^2,3,4,5 so we assume these reviews reflect true in-clinic patient experiences.

How many patients use online reviews to choose a plastic surgeon?

Software Advice, a site that reviews business software, surveyed patients about finding a new doctor. Of them, 71% used online reviews as the very first step.⁶

In 2022 the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) reported a survey on choosing a breast reconstruction surgeon. It covered 990 women, with a median age of 37. Reviews mattered most. Online reviews on sites such as Vitals.com or WebMD earned the top importance rating, averaging 6.1 on a 7-point scale.⁷

Recommendations from another surgeon and years of experience came next, each at 5.7. Recommendations from family or friends and having a surgeon close to home rated around 5. Surgeon gender, race and ethnicity ranked low.⁷

About 7,749 surgeons certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery (ABPS) were actively practicing plastic surgery in the US as of January 2026. The board counts 10,940 surgeons certified since 1937.⁸

What share of plastic surgery practices have fewer than 50 Google reviews?

Practices differ widely on count. Among Ichelon's 874 practices, 29.9% had fewer than 50 Google reviews, 41.8% had 50 to 199, 20.7% had 200 to 499 and 7.7% had 500 or more.¹

The star rating is an average (mean) taken across practices.

One pattern we've been surprised to see is the splitting of practices, reviews and identity across listings. When one practice has duplicate or outdated listings, its reviews are diluted between profiles, as covered in our duplicate listings piece. Sometimes "duplicates" appear in unexpected ways. One is several businesses at the same address for surgical and nonsurgical treatments, even though many patients receive both kinds of care from clinicians at that address (for example, cosmetic and general dermatology). Another is an address or identity only partly moved, often around an acquisition.

How positive are plastic surgery reviews, and what moves the rating?

Ratings cluster at 5 stars. A 2018 study in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery examined online reviews of breast augmentation. Its abstract reports that 87.5% were positive, with ratings peaking in frequency at 5 stars and again at 1 star.³

A 2022 study in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal, published by The Aesthetic Society, covered 11,078 reviews of surgeons in six US cities.²

The study's abstract names "aesthetic appearance" as the strongest predictor of rating across all procedures. Reconstructive procedures were rated significantly higher than cosmetic ones (P = 0.035, a gap unlikely to be chance).²

In the 2022 abstract, where patients posted varied by city. Reviews in Miami, Philadelphia, New York City and Chicago sat mostly on RealSelf by volume, a review site specifically for cosmetic procedures. Houston reviews sat mostly on Google, and Los Angeles reviews mostly on Yelp.²

The 2018 abstract reports that Google's popularity relative to Yelp varied by region. Average ratings also varied by platform.³

Do review count and recency affect Google Maps ranking and AI recommendations?

Local search ranking is the order in which Google shows nearby businesses in Maps and local results. TheDocMirror, a trade site for physicians, reports that Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors study puts review signals at about 20% of ranking weight. Whitespark sells local search software, and that 20% is an assessment of importance relative to all signals it studies.⁹

Recency matters to some. BrightLocal, a local search software company, surveyed consumers in 2025 about businesses of every kind. In that survey, 20% of consumers "feel that reviews as recent as two weeks old are impactful to their decisions," down from 27% in BrightLocal's 2024 survey.^10,11

Neur Digital, a digital marketing agency, writes about how AI tools pick plastic surgeons to recommend. Review volume tips the scale, it says. In its words, "a practice with 400 reviews averaging 4.8 stars is more likely to be recommended than one with 40 reviews." It says this holds "even if the quality of care is identical."¹²

How AI tools name practices is covered in what AI search says, and Google Maps answering questions from review text in the Ask Maps change.

What do Google and the FTC allow when a practice asks for reviews?

Asking is fine without rewards or steering. Google lets businesses encourage reviews of a genuine experience. It requires doing so "without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review."¹³

Google bans incentives such as "free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews." Google calls these "strictly prohibited." It labels them "fake & misleading content" because reviews on Maps must reflect a genuine experience.⁴

The federal rule covers similar ground. For consumer reviews and testimonials, it bans fake reviews, purchased reviews and insider reviews. Insider reviews are written by staff or others tied to the business. It also bans rewards that depend on a review's sentiment, as covered in our review rule piece.⁵

We recommend asking every patient at the same point, by the same channel. That gives the clearest signal on the patient experience, and shows where to raise your rate of reviews per patient. If you conduct reconstructive or medical visits in addition to aesthetic visits, consider splitting reviews by key identifying characteristics to see if one might be propping up or dragging your review average; this is much easier when reviews are specific, both in terms of the provider and the treatment received. Importantly, one must not confirm a reviewer as a patient for privacy. It's best to speak generally about your appreciation and any work you've put in recently or plan to put in to improve the patient experience.

About this review

We read the sources listed below in October 2026. They were two peer-reviewed studies, one society survey release (ASPS), one certifying board's statistics page (ABPS), two Google policy pages and one federal regulation. The rest were four vendor pages and one trade site. Every data point is credited to the publisher that reported it, and none is combined with another publisher's.

Each paper's abstract supplies the peer-reviewed data points. The 2022 study covers reviews of surgeons in six US cities, and the 2018 study covers breast augmentation reviews. Ichelon covers 874 practices in 20 US cities in 2026. Women choosing a breast reconstruction surgeon answered the ASPS survey. BrightLocal covers consumers of all local businesses. Whitespark's data point comes from TheDocMirror's report of it.

Fractional Aesthetics is a growth strategy practice for aesthetic medical businesses.