A patient who wants an implant consultation used to open Google, type “implant dentist near me,” and choose from a map and a page of links. Increasingly that same patient opens ChatGPT or Perplexity, asks the question in plain language, and reads a short written answer that names two or three practices.
If yours is one of the practices named, nothing dramatic shows up in your analytics. If it isn’t, nothing shows up either. That is what makes AI search easy to ignore, and expensive to ignore.
This post explains what is actually happening when an AI assistant answers a question like that, what a practice can genuinely influence, and — just as importantly — what nobody can honestly promise you.
What is actually happening when someone asks an AI for a dentist
Three systems come up most often, and they behave differently:
- Google AI Overviews sit on top of ordinary Google Search. The summary appears above the familiar results and links out to pages it drew from.
- ChatGPT answers from two different places. When it searches the web, it pulls live pages and cites them. When it doesn’t search, it answers from training data, which is older and carries no live link.
- Perplexity is built around citation. Numbered sources sit next to the claims they support.
The structural point matters more than the differences: these systems are reading and summarising sources. They are not ranking you the way a map pack ranks you. They assemble an answer, and your practice either appears inside it as a named, sourced business or it does not.
The second structural point is more encouraging. Much of what they read is the same open web that local search has always run on — your own website, your Google Business Profile, directories, local news, professional associations, review platforms. This is not a separate universe that needs a separate budget. It is largely the same groundwork, judged by a stricter reader.
Why some practices get named and others don’t
Nobody outside these companies can tell you the exact selection logic, and anyone who claims otherwise is guessing confidently. But the pattern across answers is consistent enough to work with.
Practices that get named tend to share four traits:
- They exist clearly as one entity. The same practice name, address and phone number appear everywhere, without contradiction.
- There is something specific to say about them. “General and cosmetic dentistry” gives an assistant nothing to work with. “Single-visit crowns, implant placement and restoration, and sedation for anxious patients” does.
- The information is current. Old hours, a former address or a phone number from two years ago make a listing risky to repeat.
- Something other than their own website says so. Self-description alone is weak corroboration.
The uncomfortable summary is that these systems favour practices that are easy to describe accurately. A vague, thin or inconsistent online presence is hard to summarise safely, so it tends to get skipped in favour of a competitor who is easier to characterise.
What you can actually influence
Make your practice information boringly consistent
Name, address, phone number and hours should be identical everywhere they appear. The usual culprits are a missing suite number, an abbreviation used in one place and spelled out in another, an old tracking number still live on a directory, or a previous practice name left over from before a partner change. Every contradiction makes you a slightly riskier business to cite.
Give your treatment pages real depth
One page for each treatment you actually want more of. What the procedure involves, who it suits, what recovery is like, and what determines the cost. Write it for a nervous patient rather than for a search engine — the plain, specific version is also the version an assistant can quote from.
Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current
Services listed properly, correct categories, accurate hours including holidays, photographs that are not five years old, and questions actually answered. This profile is one of the most machine-readable descriptions of your practice that exists, and it is entirely within your control.
Be mentioned somewhere these systems already trust
A local news mention, a professional association listing, a dental school affiliation, a legitimate directory, a community sponsorship. The aim is straightforward corroboration from sources that already have standing — not link schemes, which are a liability rather than a shortcut.
Answer the questions patients actually ask
Real patient questions are specific and awkward: how much an implant costs in your city, whether a root canal hurts, whether you take a particular insurance, whether you see children. Answer them in plain language, and put the answer in the first sentence rather than three paragraphs down.
Structured data — schema markup that labels your address, hours and services in a form machines read directly — helps here too. It is useful plumbing, not magic, and it works only when the underlying information is already correct.
What nobody can honestly promise you
This is the part most marketing pages skip, so we will be direct about it.
- No one can guarantee your practice will be cited. There is no submission form, no paid placement and no published list of ranking factors for any of these systems.
- Answers are not stable. Ask the same question twice and you can get two different answers naming different practices.
- Answers vary by location and phrasing. The same question asked from two nearby towns, or worded slightly differently, can produce entirely different results.
- The systems change frequently. Behaviour that holds this quarter may not hold next quarter.
Anyone selling you a guaranteed AI ranking is selling something they cannot control. What can honestly be done is real work: make your practice accurate, specific, current and corroborated, then check regularly what the assistants actually say about you and correct what is wrong.
How to tell whether it is working
You can do this yourself, and it is worth doing at least once before paying anyone to do it for you.
- Ask the questions a patient would ask. Not “best dentist” — try something like who does same-day crowns in your town, or where to go for implants near a specific neighbourhood.
- Write down what each assistant says. Were you named? Was the information right? Which competitors were named instead?
- Note wrong facts specifically. Wrong hours, services you no longer offer, an old address, or a claim that you are closed are all fixable — and all actively costing you.
- Repeat monthly, with the same questions. A single snapshot tells you little. The change over time is the signal.
What you are looking for is not a score. It is a direction of travel: whether you are named more often, described more accurately, and mentioned for the treatments you actually want.
This is the work behind our AI Search Visibility service, and we will say plainly what it is: hands-on work done by people, reviewed monthly, not an automated tool. It is an early-stage discipline, and we would rather describe it accurately than dress it up. Where it sits in our plans is listed on our pricing page.
Where to start
If you do only one thing this month, resolve the contradictions in your practice information — the old number, the missing suite, the name that doesn’t match. It is unglamorous and it is the foundation everything else rests on.
If you do a second thing, pick the single treatment you most want more of and write a genuinely useful page about it. Not a brochure page. The page you would want to read if you were the nervous patient considering it.
Then ask the assistants again in a month, and see whether the answer has changed.
If you would rather see where your practice stands before deciding what to fix, we check exactly this — along with your site and your local search presence — as part of a free audit. It takes about sixty seconds to request and there is no call required.