Will ChatGPT recommend your dental practice? How to check

ChatGPT dentist recommendations are now part of how some patients choose a practice. Someone types "can you recommend a good dentist in [town] that takes new patients?" and gets a short list of names. If your practice is not on it, that patient may never see your website or your Google listing. There is no form to fill in to be included. The assistants build their answers from what they can find and read about you on the web, so the work is making sure what they find is accurate, complete and easy to read.

How to check whether ChatGPT recommends your practice

Start by finding out where you stand. It takes half an hour.

1. Write down five questions a patient might ask. For example: "best dentist in [town]", "dentist in [town] taking new NHS patients", "where can I get Invisalign in [town]", "emergency dentist near [town] open Saturday", "dentist in [town] good with nervous patients".
2. Ask each one in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude, and search the same phrases in Google to see whether an AI Overview appears.
3. Use a private browser window or a logged-out session where you can, so your own history does not shape the answer.
4. Ask each question more than once. These tools generate a fresh answer each time, and the names can change between runs. A practice named three times out of three is in a different position from one named once out of three.
5. Record the results: which practices were named, in what order, and what reasons the assistant gave. The reasons tell you what it has read.

Repeat the exercise every month or two. Answers shift as the tools change and as information about practices changes.

What AI assistants can see about your practice

Each company publishes some information about how its assistant reaches websites. What they confirm is that your website needs to be reachable by their crawlers:

None of these companies publishes a full account of how it picks one practice over another for a local question. What is clear is that the assistants draw on the open web: websites, listings, reviews and other pages that mention you. So the practical work is the same as good local search work, done carefully.

Step 1: make sure the assistants can read your website

Your website's robots.txt file tells crawlers what they may visit. You can view it at yourpractice.co.uk/robots.txt. Check that it does not block OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot, and that it does not block Googlebot.

Some hosting and security services offer settings that block AI crawlers, and these can be switched on without the practice realising. Ask whoever manages your website whether any such setting is active.

Blocking AI training is a separate choice. OpenAI's GPTBot, Anthropic's ClaudeBot and Google's Google-Extended token relate to training AI models. Google says Google-Extended does not affect a site's inclusion in Google Search and is not a ranking signal. You can block training crawlers and still allow the search ones.

Step 2: state the facts patients ask about, in plain words

Assistants answer questions such as "which dentist in [town] takes NHS patients?" or "who does implants near me?" An assistant can only name you if it can find that fact stated somewhere it trusts. Make sure your website says, in plain text rather than only in images:

• whether you are NHS, private or mixed, and whether you are accepting new patients
• each treatment you offer, on its own page, with a price or "from" price
• your full address, the areas you serve and how to get there
• opening hours, including evenings, Saturdays and emergency arrangements
• who the clinicians are, with qualifications and GDC numbers, which the GDC requires anyway
• practical details patients ask about: parking, step-free access, sedation, languages spoken, help for nervous patients

Write it the way you would answer the question on the phone. "We are accepting new NHS patients for check-ups" is far easier for any reader, human or machine, than a vague "contact us for availability".

Step 3: keep your listings accurate everywhere

Google's AI features guidance lists accurate business profile information among its best practices. Your Google Business Profile, the NHS website profile if you are an NHS practice in England, Apple Maps, Bing and the main directories should all show the same name, address, phone number, hours and website.

Conflicting details make you harder to recommend with confidence. If one directory says you closed and another says you are open on Saturdays, a careful assistant may leave you out.

Step 4: reviews, and what they say

When assistants explain a recommendation, they can summarise what reviewers say: "patients praise the gentle approach" or "known for emergency appointments". Google's local ranking guide says how many reviews you have feeds into prominence, its measure of how well known a business is, and reviews are also public text any assistant can read.

• Ask every satisfied patient for a review, steadily, not in bursts. Our guide to working out a review target shows how many your town's map leaders have.
• Reply to reviews. Google recommends it, and a thoughtful reply is more public text about how you care for patients. See how to reply to Google reviews.
• Never write, buy or swap reviews. The CMA's guide to publishing consumer reviews sets out the legal duties around fake and concealed incentivised reviews.

Step 5: be mentioned in your area

An assistant asked about dentists in your town reads pages about your town. Genuine local mentions help both Google and the assistants connect your practice with the place: a local news story, a community sponsorship listed on the club's own website, a school talk, a page on the local business association's site. Google's ranking guide also names how many websites link to your business as part of prominence.

Avoid shortcuts. Posting on forums while pretending to be a patient, publishing dozens of near-identical AI-written pages for every nearby village, or paying for mass directory submissions all risk breaking Google's spam policies or consumer law, and none of them builds the trust you need.

How to tell whether it is working

• Repeat your five questions monthly and keep the record.
• Check Search Console. Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the Web search type of the Performance report, so it is already in your figures, though not separated out.
• Check Google Analytics referrals. Visits from assistants that link to your site can appear as referral traffic from their domains, such as chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai.
• Ask new patients how they found you, and add "an AI assistant such as ChatGPT" as an option on your new patient form.

What can ChatGPT do for your practice directly?

Beyond being recommended by it, ChatGPT and similar tools can help a practice with everyday writing: a first draft of a treatment page, a clearer new-patient letter, or a plainer explanation of your fees. Treat every draft as a starting point. Check that it makes no claim the GDC or the ASA would see as misleading, that prices and facts are yours, and that it promises no outcomes. Never paste patient names, records or anything that could identify a patient into a general AI tool.

What not to worry about

You do not need a special AI file, a new type of markup or an "AI SEO" package to be eligible for Google's AI answers. Google says so directly: there are no additional requirements or special optimisations for AI Overviews or AI Mode. The same applies in spirit to the other assistants, which draw on the open web. A practice that is easy to find, accurately listed, well reviewed and clear about what it offers is the practice an assistant can recommend with confidence.

For the groundwork behind all of this, start with local SEO for dentists.