Dental Radar
The requested ground is represented.
Reports identify the address or ZIP interpreted, the market area shown, and material coverage gaps.
Methodology and sources
How Dental Radar builds a defensible market picture.
We publish what each part of a report measures, where its evidence comes from, how current it is, and where it can be uncertain. We do not publish the proprietary recipe that turns those inputs into Dental Radar’s market reading.
Last updated 2026-08-24
TraceableEvery published figure names its source and vintage.
ComparableFigures are shown beside relevant context so readers can interpret them responsibly.
QualifiedEstimates, modeled rates, and known gaps are labeled.
The four evidence lanes
A promising dental location has to work on more than one dimension. Dental Radar keeps four different questions separate so a strong demographic profile cannot quietly hide a crowded market.
Evidence lane
Question it supports
Primary evidence
Cadence
Important limit
People and households
Who lives near the address, and what does the local household economy look like?
U.S. Census Bureau ACS, Decennial Census, and TIGER/Line geography
Annual releases; each report states its vintage
ACS figures are survey estimates and include uncertainty.
Dental demand
How much of the nearby adult population is likely to use dental care?
CDC PLACES small-area health estimates and a labeled practice-capacity benchmark
Release-specific; the report prints the underlying survey year
Local health rates are modeled estimates and do not count individual residents.
Market change
Is the surrounding population and employment base moving in a helpful direction?
Decennial Census, Population Estimates Program, and LEHD LODES
Annual where available; vintages travel with the figure
Recent government estimates can be geographically coarser than the report area.
Operating competition
Which dental offices appear to be operating nearby, and what supports that conclusion?
Business listings, practice websites, NPPES, and Overture Maps; Census establishment data checks aggregate office counts
Google refreshed within 90 days; website checks within 180 days; NPPES monthly or live; Overture pinned by release
Recent openings, closures, and offices with little public presence can be missed or stale.
What we validate
The date belongs to the number.
A source name alone is not enough. Dataset vintage and retrieval timing stay attached to the evidence.
The report agrees with itself.
Headlines, tables, comparisons, and the written reading are checked against the figures they summarize.
A qualified answer stays qualified.
Survey margins, modeled estimates, incomplete evidence, and unavailable measures are shown instead of converted into false precision.
Modeled and contextual evidence
Lifestyle segments are modeled from 2024 ACS five-year estimates. Percentages describe area-level neighborhood patterns rather than individual households. Ranges are model-based and differ from official ACS confidence intervals. Results appear only when coverage and sample thresholds are met.
Commercial context uses filtered, deduplicated Overture Places data and straight-line distance. It does not include visits or traffic and does not affect the Dental Opportunity Score.
What remains proprietary
The public trust boundary
We disclose the evidence families, publisher, vintage, meaning, and material limitations behind the report. That is enough to inspect what a figure can support.
The product’s protected work
Scoring calibration, search strategy, entity-resolution rules, and internal quality controls are proprietary. Those details are withheld because they are part of the product. The evidence behind a published figure remains inspectable.
What a report does not decide
Dental Radar screens one location against available market evidence. It is not an appraisal, valuation, lease review, traffic study, feasibility guarantee, or prediction of practice revenue. It cannot inspect visibility from the road, parking, build-out cost, lease terms, referral relationships, or how well a particular operator will execute.
Use the report to find strengths, constraints, and questions worth investigating. Pair it with an on-site visit and the professional review appropriate to the decision.
Source registry
This registry names the principal public evidence families used in current reports.
| Publisher | Dataset family | Used for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. Census Bureau | American Community Survey (2020–2024) | Population, households, income, education, age, housing, language, and lifestyle inputs | ACS data |
| U.S. Census Bureau | Decennial Census (2020) | Population baseline | 2020 Census data |
| U.S. Census Bureau | Population Estimates Program (vintage 2025) | Current population estimate and recent county trend | Population estimates |
| U.S. Census Bureau | TIGER/Line (2024) | Block-group boundaries and Census ZIP-area outlines | TIGER/Line files |
| U.S. Census Bureau | LEHD LODES8 (2023) | Workplace and resident employment, industry, pay bands, and daytime population | LODES data |
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | PLACES (2025 release) | Dental attendance, tooth loss, insurance, hardship, and mental-health estimates | CDC PLACES |
| Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services | NPPES NPI Registry (monthly) | Cross-check on provider registrations and declared specialty | NPI Registry |
| Google Places (retrieved or refreshed within 90 days) | Public business-listing evidence and the competing-office list | Places documentation | |
| Overture Maps Foundation | Overture Maps Places (release 2026-08-19.0) | Practice websites, category signals, and selected commercial context | Overture Maps |
| U.S. Census Bureau | ZIP Code Business Patterns (2022) | Independent internal check on dental-office counts | Business Patterns data |
| U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Consumer Expenditure Survey (2022–2024) | Modeled household out-of-pocket dental spending | Consumer Expenditure data |
| GeoNames | GeoNames postal data (retrieved for the current build) | Place names shown with nearby ZIP codes | GeoNames postal files |
| American Dental Association Health Policy Institute | ADA dentist workforce (2024 data, published August 2025) | Statewide dentists per 100,000 and the statewide dentists-per-office conversion | ADA dentist workforce |