In February 2026, BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 reported that 45% of US consumers use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. AI assistants are now the third most used source of local business recommendations, behind only Google and Facebook.
BrightLocal sells local SEO and review software. It surveyed 1,002 US adults through SurveyMonkey and does not publish its fieldwork dates. The survey covers every kind of local business, not dentists specifically. Even with those caveats, the direction is hard to argue with.
I have spent the past year testing what actually gets a practice named in those answers. I tested it for my dental clients, and for a non-dental client where I could measure AI traffic closely. The short version: most of what is sold as "AI SEO" does not matter, and the unglamorous basics matter more than ever.
AI assistants build a dentist recommendation from public evidence: search results, your Google Business Profile and map listings, reviews, directories, your own website and press coverage. To be named, let their crawlers in, keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere, publish answer-first service pages, earn reviews and local mentions, and test the answers monthly.
- 45% of US consumers used ChatGPT or other generative AI for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier (BrightLocal, 2026, n=1,002).
- 61% of US adults aged 18 to 29 use ChatGPT, against 19% of those 65 and older (Pew Research Center, February 2026, n=5,119).
- 32% of US adults used an AI chatbot for health information in the past year (KFF, February to March 2026, n=1,343).
- 8% of Google visits with an AI summary led to a click on a regular result, against 15% without one (Pew Research Center, March 2025 browsing data).
- About 24 hours is how long OpenAI says ChatGPT search takes to adjust after a robots.txt change, the file that can lock you out of its answers (OpenAI).
Are patients really asking AI to find a dentist?
Yes, and younger patients most of all. In February 2026, 44% of US adults told the Pew Research Center they use ChatGPT, 24% said they use Gemini and 17% said they use Copilot.
Pew surveyed 5,119 adults on its American Trends Panel from February 17 to 23, 2026, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 points. According to the full report, about half of adults now use some AI chatbot, and 42% of all adults use one to search for information.
Health questions are part of that habit. A KFF poll of 1,343 adults ran from February 24 to March 2, 2026, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points. It found 32% had used an AI chatbot for health information in the past year. Of those users, 41% said they wanted to look things up before deciding whether to see a provider.
The West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America surveyed 5,660 adults from October 27 to December 22, 2025 (plus or minus 2.1 points). One in four had used an AI tool for health information or advice, and 59% of recent users said they researched with AI before visiting a doctor.
What happens to your clicks when Google answers first?
Fewer people click through, so being the cited source matters more than being the fourth blue link. The Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025 across 68,879 Google searches, and 18% of those searches produced an AI summary.
When a summary appeared, people clicked a regular result on 8% of visits, against 15% when there was none. They clicked a link inside the summary on just 1% of visits, and they ended their browsing session more often.
Pew measured a single month in 2025, so I treat these numbers as a dated baseline rather than today's rate. The direction is what matters: the answer on the results page is now competing with your website for the patient's attention.
Where do ChatGPT and Gemini get their dentist recommendations?
From public evidence that already exists about your practice, gathered through search at the moment the patient asks. Neither OpenAI nor Google publishes a recipe, so here is what their own documentation says, and where I am inferring.
OpenAI's help center says ChatGPT search "typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries" and sends them to search providers. It can also use location "to find local results." Google calls its version query fan-out, "issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources."
The searches in step three reach six kinds of source. This is the map I work from with every practice, with the documented parts separated from my own inferences.
Here are three practices near Springfield that patients often mention for dental implants:
1. Alder Dental Studio: rated 4.9 from about 300 Google reviews, and several recent reviews mention implant consultations and sedation for anxious patients. Their implants page explains each stage and the typical healing time. (alderdental.example)
2. Birchwood Family Dentistry: places and restores implants in house, and its lead dentist was quoted in a local news story about full-arch treatment. (springfieldnews.example)
3. Cedar Oral Surgery: a specialist practice, worth considering if you may need a bone graft first. Listed in the state dental society directory. (statedental.example)
Before booking, ask each office what the consultation costs and how many implant cases they handle each year.
Look at what that illustrative answer is built from: a review count and what the reviews say, a service page that answers the healing question, a local news mention and a directory listing. A practice can influence every one of those, and none of them is a special AI file.
Which "AI SEO" tactics can you safely skip?
Most of the ones sold as new. Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features, updated July 10, 2026, says you do not need "new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown" to appear in Google Search.
It is just as direct about the rest: "There's no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI," and "there's no special schema.org markup you need to add." On llms.txt, Google says creating one "will neither harm nor help" your visibility in Google Search.
- An llms.txt file (Google Search ignores it)
- Special "AI markup" or schema for chatbots
- Chopping pages into tiny chunks for AI
- Buying mentions on low quality sites
- FAQ schema for rich results (Google stopped showing them on May 7, 2026)
- Tools that claim to see inside the AI ranking
- One consistent name, address and phone everywhere
- Pages crawlers can reach, including OAI-SearchBot
- Answer-first content with clear headings
- A complete, current Google Business Profile
- Reviews that describe real visits, earned steadily
- Genuine local press and directory citations
Two clarifications. An llms.txt file does no harm, and Google says other services may use one, so if your developer already added it, leave it. And structured data is still worth having for Google Search generally, which is step three below.
FAQ sections are still worth writing, for patients and for answer extraction. Just do not buy them on the promise of extra space in Google: the Search Central changelog confirms that FAQ rich results stopped appearing on May 7, 2026.
How do you get your practice recommended? The seven step plan
Work through it in this order, because each step makes the next one count. The first three are a week or two of setup. The last four are habits.
Step 1. Let the right crawlers in
AI assistants cannot cite a page their crawler is not allowed to read. OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites that block OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers," and that robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to apply.
Each OpenAI bot is set separately, so you can stay out of model training and still appear in search. Google works the same way: Google-Extended controls Gemini training and grounding in Gemini Apps, but "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search."
| Crawler (robots.txt name) | What it does | My default |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | Surfaces sites in ChatGPT search answers | Allow |
| ChatGPT-User | Visits a page when a ChatGPT user's request needs it | Allow |
| GPTBot | Collects content that may train OpenAI models | Your choice, no effect on search |
| Googlebot | Google Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode | Allow |
| Google-Extended | Gemini training, and grounding in Gemini Apps | Allow if you want Gemini to use your pages |
| Bingbot | Bing search; Bing's AI report covers Copilot citations | Allow |
| PerplexityBot | Surfaces and links sites in Perplexity; not used for training | Allow |
Two traps catch practices. Security settings at the host or CDN can block bots that robots.txt allows, and OpenAI asks that the host allow traffic from its published searchbot IP addresses. And a site that loads its text with scripts may show crawlers very little, which is why Google asks for important content "in textual form."
Step 2. Make your name, address and phone identical everywhere
An assistant that finds three versions of your practice name has three weak signals instead of one strong one. That is my reasoning rather than a published rule, but it matches what I see in testing, and fixing it costs nothing.
Google's AI guide says Business Profiles help your services show up "in both AI responses and other Google Search results." Microsoft's Bing Webmaster team tells local businesses to register with Bing Places for Business so that address, hours and contact details stay current. The Google Business Profile guide for dental practices covers the profile field by field.
Do not skip Apple. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, the share of consumers using Apple Maps nearly doubled, from 14% to 27%.
- Google Business Profile: name exactly as on your signage, suite number, main phone, hours including holidays
- Bing Places for Business: claimed, same details, same categories
- Apple Business Connect: claimed, same details
- Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Yelp, WebMD: one listing each, no duplicates, current dentists only
- Insurer and state dental society directories: current address and phone
- Your website: the same name, address and phone in the footer and on the contact page, as text
- Dentist bio pages: full name, credentials and practice, matching every directory
- Old addresses and numbers: searched for, found, and corrected or closed
The dentist bio pages are the underrated line. At Kraja & Sidhu Dental in Silver Spring, roughly 600 people a month search the two doctors by name. That traffic now lands on their own bio pages instead of third party profiles the practice cannot edit.
Step 3. Add Dentist structured data that matches the page
Structured data will not get you into an AI answer by itself, and Google says it "isn't required for generative AI search." It is still worth an hour, because it states your practice details in a form machines read without guessing.
Schema.org's Dentist type sits under both LocalBusiness and MedicalBusiness, so use it rather than a generic type. Google's LocalBusiness documentation requires only a name and address, recommends the properties below, and asks for "the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible."
| Property | What to put in it | Google's documentation |
|---|---|---|
| @type | Dentist | Use the most specific subtype |
| name | Exactly the name on your signage and profile | Required |
| address | Street, suite, city, state, ZIP | Required |
| telephone | The main number patients call | Recommended |
| url | The page for this location | Recommended |
| geo | Latitude and longitude of the front door | Recommended |
| openingHoursSpecification | Hours that match your profile | Recommended |
| priceRange | Only if you are comfortable showing one | Recommended |
One thing to leave out is your own star rating. Google recommends aggregateRating and review markup only "for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses," so marking up your own reviews earns you nothing.
Step 4. Write service pages that answer first
Patients ask AI in full questions, and those are exactly the searches where Google answers first. In Pew's March 2025 data, 60% of Google searches that began with a question word produced an AI summary, against 8% of one or two word searches.
So open every service page with the answer a patient wants, in two plain sentences: who the treatment is for, how long it takes, how the cost is set and what the first visit involves. Then give the detail, under headings that read like the questions patients actually ask.
Google's guide asks for "non-commodity content" and "a unique point of view." Your own facts are the easy win: your consultation fee, your real wait for a new patient exam, the payment plans you take. The full method is in how to write dental service pages that rank without backlinks.
Step 5. Earn reviews that describe real visits
Reviews feed prominence, and Google says so plainly in its local ranking help: "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." In AI answers they arguably count twice, because the review text itself gets summarized.
BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 82% of consumers read AI review summaries, 47% will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% look for reviews written in the last three months. A steady flow of specific reviews gives the summary something true to say.
Ask every patient who had a good appointment, in person, with a one tap link. Never offer anything in return and never filter who you ask. The rules and safe reply wording are in the Google reviews guide for dentists.
Step 6. Earn mentions a journalist would make
Google is blunt that seeking inauthentic "mentions" across the web "isn't as helpful as it might seem." Genuine ones are different: a quote in local news, a community sponsorship page, a dental society listing, a regional top dentist list.
In Pew's 2025 data, 6% of the links in AI summaries pointed to .gov sites, and Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit together made up 15%. Only 5% of summaries linked to a news site. Local press is a small share of citations, but it is the share a practice can actually earn, and the press release guide covers the honest economics of distribution.
Step 7. Run the same prompt test every month
In my testing, answers change between runs and between users, so one screenshot proves nothing. A fixed set of prompts, run the same way each month and written down, shows a trend you can act on.
Use a private browser window, set the location to your town, and keep the wording identical every month. Run each prompt in ChatGPT, Gemini, Google's AI Mode, Perplexity and Copilot. The whole test takes about 30 minutes.
| Prompt (use your town) | Tool | Mentioned? Y/N | Cited URL | Competitor named | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best dentist in [town] for dental implants | ChatGPT | Y / N | |||
| Best dentist in [town] for dental implants | Gemini | Y / N | |||
| Emergency dentist open Saturday near [town] | Google AI Mode | Y / N | |||
| Dentist in [town] good with anxious patients | Perplexity | Y / N | |||
| How much do veneers cost in [town]? | ChatGPT | Y / N | |||
| How long does a dental implant take to heal? | Google AI Overview | Y / N | |||
| Family dentist in [town] that takes [insurer] | Copilot | Y / N | |||
| What do patients say about [your practice]? | ChatGPT | Y / N |
Read the sheet for three things: whether you are named at all, which of your URLs get cited, and which competitor keeps appearing instead. When a competitor keeps winning a prompt, open the pages that answer cites and compare them with yours. If you would like me to run the first round with you, book a free 30 minute call.
How do you see AI traffic in GA4?
Open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition, and look for the AI Assistant channel. Google Analytics' default channel group now includes it for visits "from sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot, or Grok."
Two gaps to know about. The channel "excludes Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode," so those visits sit inside Organic Search. And the description names five assistants without Perplexity, so switch the table to Session source and check perplexity.ai, chatgpt.com, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com directly. OpenAI says ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it sends, which makes its visits easy to spot.
| Tool | Where to look | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| GA4 | Traffic acquisition, AI Assistant channel | Visits and key events from ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and others |
| GA4 | Session source: chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com | The same visits by assistant, including any the channel misses |
| Search Console | Generative AI performance report | Impressions of your links in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, device and country |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | AI Performance | Citations of your pages in Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries |
| Your front desk | "How did you hear about us?" | Patients who read an AI answer and called without clicking |
Google's Generative AI performance report counts impressions, meaning how many times links to your site were shown in an AI feature. Its help page describes impressions only, not clicks, so pair it with GA4. Bing's AI Performance report does a similar job for Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, counting citations of your pages.
Then make the visits count. If your tracking already records calls, forms and bookings as key events, the AI Assistant row shows inquiries, not just visits. If it does not, start with the GA4 and Tag Manager tracking setup.
Where should you start this week?
With the two checks that take ten minutes and can silently remove you from AI answers: robots.txt and the Search Console AI setting. Then run the prompt test once, before you change anything else, so you have a baseline to compare against.
After that, follow the timeline above. None of it is exotic. It is the same work that wins the map pack, done consistently, with a monthly record of whether the assistants have noticed.
In the interest of full disclosure: all of this is part of what I sell as a monthly plan. Every step can also be done in house with free tools, and this guide is written so that you can.
Frequently asked questions
Should I block GPTBot to protect my content?
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT or Gemini?
What if an AI assistant gets my hours or details wrong?
Should I opt out of AI Overviews to protect my clicks?
Do I need a separate page for every question patients ask AI?
How long until my practice shows up in AI answers?
References
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (n=1,002 US adults), published Feb 11, 2026. www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Pew Research Center, How opinions and use of AI differ by age, Jun 17, 2026. www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/how-opinions-and-u…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Pew Research Center, Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact, report PDF (n=5,119, Feb 17 to 23, 2026). www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2026/06/PI…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- KFF, Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust: 1 in 3 adults are turning to AI chatbots for health information, Mar 25, 2026. www.kff.org/health-information-trust/poll-1-in-3-adults-ar…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Gallup and West Health, Americans Turning to AI to Supplement Healthcare Visits, Apr 14, 2026. news.gallup.com/poll/707789/americans-turning-supplement-h…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Pew Research Center, Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results, Jul 22, 2025. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-ar…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features on Google Search, updated Jul 10, 2026. developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimiza…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website, updated Dec 10, 2025. developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Latest documentation updates (FAQ rich results, llms.txt), 2026. developers.google.com/search/updates. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Google common crawlers (Google-Extended). developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Local business (LocalBusiness) structured data, updated Sep 8, 2026. developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-da…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Schema.org, Dentist type. schema.org/Dentist. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Search Console Help, Search generative AI control. support.google.com/webmasters/answer/16908024?hl=en. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Search Console Help, Generative AI performance report (Search). support.google.com/webmasters/answer/16984139. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Google Business Profile Help, Improve your local ranking on Google. support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Google Analytics Help, [GA4] Default channel group (AI Assistant channel). support.google.com/analytics/answer/9756891?hl=en. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers. developers.openai.com/docs/bots. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- OpenAI Help Center, Searching the web with ChatGPT. help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- OpenAI Help Center, Publishers and Developers FAQ. help.openai.com/en/articles/12627856-publishers-and-develo…. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Perplexity, Perplexity Crawlers. docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers. Accessed 20 October 2026.
- Microsoft Bing Webmaster Blog, Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview, Feb 10, 2026. blogs.bing.com/webmaster/February-2026/Introducing-AI-Perf…. Accessed 20 October 2026.