Hints on searching the Internet

LAST UPDATED 02/18/2019

Note added 2/18/2019: After many years of wonderful service, the Topix forums finally shut down. It will be mourned by many people with a connection to Costa Rican dentistry or medicine. RIP, Topix. I've edited this post to reflect that. Fortunately, Tripadvisor is still active.

R

esearching dentists on the Internet is easy; interpretation is trickier. Here's a quick-start guide.

HINT: I recommend copying and pasting interesting posts and reviews into a separate file, like a Word document. It might be convenient to have a separate file for each dentist.

Use your favorite search engine, such as Google or Bing.

Here’s the basic search, for a dentist Dr. Greatfind:
       Greatfind Costa Rica dentists

Capitalization isn’t important. Neither is word order, though by habit I try to keep "costa rica" together:
       dentists costa rica GREATFIND

It's sometimes helpful to specify "reviews". This can move patient reviews to the top if there are many results:
       Greatfind Costa Rica dentists reviews

Don't overlook TripAdvisor. Spam is immediately removed by the moderators.
       costa rica dentists Greatfind site:www.tripadvisor.com

HINT: Most dental patients are very happy immediately after their treatment, but it takes time for bad work to become evident. If you see a testimonial on the Internet from a happy patient posted months or years ago, you might want to try to contact the poster and ask for an update. The results might surprise you.

or more syntax fun, try playing with parentheses and the OR operator.
The following search string looks for all the pages mentioning a CR dentist named Smyth and the various misspellings of his name:
costa rica (dentist OR dental) (smith OR smyth OR smithe OR "Great Smiles")

"Great Smiles" is in quotes because it is a fixed phrase: "great" appears immediately before "smiles".
NOTE: The parentheses are required, as is the keyword "OR" which *must* be in all caps.

No matter how you search, you will often need to launch several searches to find all the mentions.

HTH

Browse some of Dave's favorite dentists from "THE DENTISTS" menu.

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