How to get your practice recommended by ChatGPT (and Google's AI)

When a patient asks ChatGPT for “a good family dentist near me” or asks Google which chiropractor in town takes walk-ins, the answer is built from data you can mostly see and change. The AI isn’t judging your clinical skill. It’s reading your Google Business Profile, your reviews, a handful of directories and your website, then picking names that look safe to recommend.

This guide is the order we’d work in if we owned an independent practice. The steps run from strongest evidence to weakest, each with what to do, how long it takes and what it costs. Near the end there’s a short list of things people sell as AI fixes that the data doesn’t support.

Step 1: Check what AI says about you today, the right way

The right way to check is to ask several real patient questions, several times each, in at least ChatGPT and Google, from your own town. One screenshot from one question is close to useless, because AI answers change from run to run.

The numbers on this are blunt. In BrightLocal’s study of about 200,000 local AI searches, re-asking the same prompt brought back the same business only about half the time, and Google Maps named a tracked business in 66% of searches against 32-38% for the AI surfaces. When Dr. Bicuspid asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude for the best dentists across the 50 largest US cities, they named 560 different practices, only 30 were named by all three, and 38% of the recommended practices changed when the question was re-asked.

Our own work points the same way. In Cleareo’s tests (November 2026), we asked 25 buyer questions in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. The engines disagreed by 20 to 33 percentage points on how often they named mid-tier brands, and 90% of the pages they cited were used by only one engine. Those were business-services questions, so we then asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity for the best dentist in 20 US cities. The four engines named 489 different practices, and only 5 were named by all four. A practice can look strong in one AI tool and be absent from another on the same afternoon.

How to run your own baseline

1. Write five questions a new patient would actually type. Mix broad and specific: “best dentist in [town]”, “emergency dentist open Saturday [town]”, “dentist for nervous patients near [neighborhood]”, “Invisalign provider [town]”, “does [your practice name] take [insurance]”.
2. Ask each one in ChatGPT (with search on), Google AI Mode, and the AI Overview on a normal Google search. Add Gemini and Perplexity if you have time.
3. Ask each question twice, ideally on different days. Use a phone on mobile data near your office, or set your location to your town, because answers shift with location.
4. Record three things per answer: were you named, who else was named, and which sources were linked.

Do it in a spreadsheet. The “who else was named” column matters more than you’d expect, because it tells you which competitors the tools already trust and which sites they read to get there.

If you’d rather not spend the afternoon, our free AI check runs five patient questions for your town in ChatGPT, Google’s AI, Claude and Perplexity, twice each, and emails you the results in two business days.

Step 2: Fix your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile is the single strongest lever, especially for Google’s own AI. A second-hand analysis from Steady Demand, reported by Driven Metrics, found about 80% of Google AI Mode’s local citations went to Maps or Business Profile URLs, and 88% for dentists. Google also documents that Gemini can ground answers in Google Maps data.

Ranking in the local 3-pack doesn’t guarantee you a place in the AI answer, though. A Local SEO Data study of 1,120 searches found 28.5% of local-pack businesses were missing from AI Mode for the same search. A complete profile gives the AI more to work with.

What to check, in order

• Primary category. Pick the most specific one that fits (“Pediatric dentist”, “Sports medicine clinic”, “Optometrist”), not a generic parent. It decides which searches you’re considered for, and it’s often set too broadly.
• Secondary categories. Add the real ones only. If you do implants and cosmetic work, there are categories for both. Don’t add ones you can’t back up, and check your state board’s rules before using anything that reads like a specialist claim (Texas, for example, regulates this under 22 TAC §108.54).
• Services. List every service with a one or two sentence plain description. AI tools quote these.
• Hours. Include holiday hours and any evening or Saturday slots. “Open Saturday” questions are common, and wrong hours lose you the answer.
• Photos. Real photos of the outside, the front desk, treatment rooms and the team. Replace stock images.
• Q&A and description. Answer the questions patients ask on the phone: insurance, parking, new patient process, languages spoken.
• Booking link and website link. Point each one to the right page rather than the homepage.

Time: two to four hours the first time, then 15 minutes a month. Cost: free.

Step 3: Get more genuine reviews, compliantly

Review count is the next strongest signal, then rating. AI tools lean towards businesses with lots of reviews and rarely recommend poorly rated ones. In one roundup of 2026 data, the median business ChatGPT named had 175 reviews against 97 for those it skipped (second-hand, medium confidence). And in Cheers’ sample of 9,435 Google AI Mode answers, only 3.7% named any business rated under 4.0 stars. That study covered home-services questions, not healthcare, so treat it as a direction rather than a rule for practices.

You don’t need a review platform to fix this. You need a habit.

The compliant way to ask

• Ask every patient the same way. A text or email after the visit with a direct link to your Google review page. Same message for everyone.
• No incentives. No discounts, raffle entries or gift cards for reviews. Google’s policy prohibits them, and the FTC’s Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, in force since October 21, 2024, bans buying reviews, fake or AI-written reviews and suppressing negative ones.
• No gating. Don’t send a “how did we do?” survey first and only pass happy patients to Google. Google explicitly bans this, and the FTC says it can breach the FTC Act even though the rule doesn’t name it.
• Spread it over time. Ten reviews a month for a year looks and works better than 100 in a week.

Replying without breaking HIPAA

Reply to reviews, good and bad. But a reply must never confirm that the reviewer is your patient, never mention a treatment, visit date or bill, and never argue the clinical details. New Vision Dental paid $23,000 in a 2022 HHS settlement over review replies that disclosed patient information, and it wasn’t the only practice caught this way.

A template that works for most negative reviews:

Thank you for taking the time to share this. We take every concern seriously and aim to give everyone who contacts us clear communication and careful care. Privacy rules stop us from discussing any individual’s situation here, but we’d welcome a call from you at (555) 123-4567 so our office manager can listen and help.

And for a positive one:

Thank you for the kind words. Our team works hard to make visits as comfortable as possible, and it’s good to hear that comes across.

Neither says “your treatment”, “your visit” or “we remember you”. That’s the test. Time: one hour to set up the request message, then a few minutes a day. Cost: free, or the review feature already in your practice software.

Step 4: Claim Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Business and the right health directories

Claim and complete the listings that AI tools actually read beyond Google. This step is where ChatGPT differs most from Google’s AI, and where practices that only think about Google lose ground.

Yelp licensed its data to OpenAI in July 2026 (Axios), and in Steady Demand’s August 2026 test of 2,880 prompts, Yelp data sat behind the business cards in nearly every ChatGPT local answer (via Driven Metrics, second-hand). OpenAI says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers alongside partner content, and Bing is widely reported to be one of them, so Bing Places is worth the 20 minutes.

For healthcare, directories carry extra weight. Yext’s study of 6.8 million AI citations found listings were 52.6% of AI citations in healthcare, with WebMD, Vitals and other health directories prominent. Yext sells listings management, so read that with its commercial interest in mind.

Listing	Why it matters	Who needs it
Yelp (claimed)	Feeds ChatGPT’s local business cards	Every practice
Bing Places	Powers Copilot; Bing is widely reported to feed ChatGPT	Every practice
Apple Business	Apple Maps and Siri place cards	Every practice
Healthgrades	Large US provider directory	Dentists, physicians, chiropractors, PTs, optometrists
Zocdoc	Booking plus profile	Practices that take online bookings
WebMD Care, Vitals	Named by Yext as leading healthcare citation sources	Physicians, dentists, specialists
RealSelf	Dedicated cosmetic treatment review site	Med spas, cosmetic practices

Make every listing match: same practice name, address, phone, hours and website. Nobody has measured how much small mismatches cost in AI answers, but there’s no upside to inconsistency. Time: half a day to a day for the full set. Cost: free for basic listings; Zocdoc and some directory upgrades are paid.

Step 5: Build service, condition and practitioner pages that answer patient questions

Your own website is often the most cited source for health questions. A Dental Economics study of 1,405 patient-style questions across 20 US markets found practice-owned websites were 53.8% of everything ChatGPT cited, more than three times the next category. When the question named a specialty, practice sites dominated even more.

The pages that get cited answer a specific question well. A page that says “We offer dental implants” gives the AI nothing to quote. A page that explains who is a good candidate, what drives the cost, how long it takes and how it compares to a bridge does.

Pages to have

• One page per main service. Implants, Invisalign, emergency care, pediatric dentistry. For a chiropractor or PT: sciatica, sports injuries, post-surgery rehab. 600 to 1,200 words each, written for patients.
• Condition pages where it fits: “jaw pain”, “lower back pain”, “dry eye”.
• One page per practitioner. Name, credentials, training, languages, what they treat. AI tools answer “which dentist in [town] speaks Spanish” from pages like this.
• Insurance and pricing page. Which plans you take, payment options, typical price ranges where you’re comfortable sharing them.
• Location details. Parking, transit, accessibility, nearby landmarks.

Write each page so the first two sentences answer the page’s main question on their own. Keep claims factual and within your board’s advertising rules.

Time: two to four hours per page if you write it yourself. Cost: free if you write, or part of a site rebuild. If your current site is hard to edit or missing these pages, our website rebuild covers up to 8 pages for $499 one time.

Step 6: Make sure AI crawlers can read your site

Check that your site isn’t blocking the bots AI tools use to read pages. If ChatGPT’s search crawler can’t get in, your pages can’t be cited there, however good they are.

OpenAI’s crawler documentation is clear: sites that block OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to apply. Perplexity documents its own crawler, PerplexityBot, the same way.

What to check

1. Open yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. Look for lines that block OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Bingbot or Googlebot. GPTBot is OpenAI’s training crawler; blocking it doesn’t remove you from ChatGPT search.
2. If you use Cloudflare, open Security, then Settings, then AI Crawler and Agent access policies. Cloudflare’s defaults for AI crawlers have changed more than once since 2025, so check what yours is set to rather than assuming.
3. Ask your web host or agency whether any security plugin or firewall blocks “unknown bots”. These sometimes catch AI crawlers by accident.
4. Make sure key content is in the page text, not only inside images or PDFs.

Time: 30 minutes to check, an hour to fix with your web person. Cost: free, or an hour of your developer’s time.

Step 7: Earn mentions on local best-of lists, in the press and in the community

Get your practice named on pages AI tools already trust: local “best dentist in [town]” lists, local news, community sites. AI answers are blended from many sources, so being named consistently across several pages helps more than one great page.

In Cleareo’s tests (November 2026), best-of list pages made up 59% of citations for “best agency” questions, and the most-named agency was never cited from its own site; it was named because other pages listed it. That was a business-services test, not healthcare, and evidence for this lever in local health is thinner than for profiles and reviews. Still, it’s how the tools work.

Practical ways to earn this:

• Look at your Step 1 spreadsheet for which list pages the AI cited. See if you’re on them and if they accept submissions.
• Local newspaper or TV health segments: offer to comment on a seasonal topic (sports injuries in football season, kids’ dental checkups before school).
• Sponsor or volunteer at community events that get written up online.
• Local awards with real judging. Skip pay-to-play “top doctor” plaques.

Time: a few hours a month. Cost: usually free; sponsorships vary.

Step 8: Track monthly

Re-run your Step 1 questions once a month, same questions, same tools, two runs each, and log the results. Monthly is enough because answers vary day to day, and you’re looking for a trend over three or four months, not a single good day.

Watch three numbers: how many answers name you, how many name your top competitors, and which sources are cited. If you want software for this, BrightLocal includes a local AI visibility tracker in its Track plan (from about $31 to $41 a month per location as of November 2026) and Local Falcon starts at $24.99 a month. Our comparison of AI visibility tools covers the options.

What not to waste money on

Several things sold as “AI optimization” don’t have evidence behind them as AI fixes. Spend on Steps 2 to 5 first.

• llms.txt files. A 300,000-domain analysis reported by Search Engine Journal found no link between having one and being cited. It’s harmless and cheap, so don’t pay extra for it.
• Schema markup as an AI fix. In Ahrefs’ controlled test of 1,885 pages, adding schema produced no meaningful citation lift in ChatGPT or AI Mode, and a small decline in AI Overviews. Schema still helps ordinary Google results, so it’s fine as part of a normal site build. It isn’t a reason to hire an agency.
• Buying reviews or review “boosts”. Illegal under the FTC rule, against Google’s policy, and Google removes them. The risk is your whole profile.
• Stuffing keywords into reviews. Asking patients to mention “best implant dentist in [town]” makes reviews look scripted. We haven’t found any study showing it helps AI recommendations.
• Guaranteed AI rankings. Nobody controls what ChatGPT says. If an agency guarantees placement, ask what happens when it doesn’t.

The full checklist

Step	Time it takes	Cost (as of November 2026)	Evidence strength
1. Baseline check across tools and runs	2-3 hours	Free	Strong (it’s how answers behave)
2. Google Business Profile	2-4 hours, then 15 min/month	Free	Strong
3. Genuine reviews, HIPAA-safe replies	1 hour setup, minutes daily	Free	Strong for count, medium for rating thresholds
4. Yelp, Bing, Apple, health directories	Half to full day	Free basic; some paid upgrades	Medium-strong
5. Service, condition, practitioner pages	2-4 hours per page	Free if DIY	Medium-strong (strong for dental)
6. AI crawler access	30-90 minutes	Free	Strong when blocked; no gain once open
7. Mentions and best-of lists	A few hours a month	Mostly free	Medium (thin in local health)
8. Monthly tracking	1-2 hours a month	Free, or $25-41/month for tools	Needed to see anything

A note for UK and Australian practices

The same steps apply, but the review and advertising rules differ, and there’s less published data on AI recommendations for health practices in either country. We haven’t found a UK or Australian equivalent of the US surveys on patients using AI.

In Australia, Ahpra’s advertising guidelines ban clinical testimonials in your own advertising, which includes your website and social pages. Reviews on third-party sites you don’t control are generally fine, so ask patients to review you on Google and leave them there; don’t copy them onto your site.

In the UK, the DMCC Act fake review ban has applied since April 2025. Aesthetics clinics can’t advertise prescription-only medicines such as Botox to the public, per CAP’s guidance, so service pages need to describe consultations and treatment areas rather than the product. Only GDC-registered specialists may call themselves “specialist”.

Where to start this week

1. Run the Step 1 check for five questions, or request our free check.
2. Fix your Google Business Profile primary category, services and hours.
3. Set up one review request message that goes to every patient, and save the HIPAA-safe reply template.
4. Claim Yelp and Bing Places if you haven’t.
5. Open your robots.txt and confirm OAI-SearchBot isn’t blocked.

That’s a day’s work, and it covers most of the evidence. If you want to know why these levers rank in this order, we’ve written up what decides which practices AI recommends. If you’d rather hand it off, our AI visibility service does this work month to month, with pricing on the site. We’re new, so judge us on the free check first.