TL;DR. We submitted 100 variations of "best dentist near me" to ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity across 25 US cities. Out of 4,300 individual practice mentions surfaced, only 12% earned an actual citation back to the practice's website or Google Business Profile. The rest were unattributed paragraphs that didn't drive a single click.
If you're a practice owner who thinks ranking on Google Maps is enough, the AI search era says otherwise. Here's what the cited 12% are doing differently.
Why we ran this study
Dental practices are a near-perfect test case for AI local search — high-intent buyers, geographic specificity, mature Google Business Profile ecosystem. If anybody should be visible in AI Overviews, it's a five-star practice in a city. Most aren't.
We picked 25 US cities (4 in each major region plus a handful of secondary markets), ran four query variations per city ("best dentist near me", "best family dentist [city]", "top-rated dentist [city]", "emergency dentist [city]"), and captured the answers across three AI engines on five different days.
The 12% pattern: what cited practices share
The 516 practices that earned at least one citation shared a clear technical and content fingerprint:
- A Google Business Profile with a complete services list, a 90%+ photo completeness score, and a Q&A section the practice actively responds to (not just patients asking).
- A practice website with at least one long-form FAQ page (the words "frequently asked questions" + 10+ Q&A items), LocalBusiness or Dentist schema, and an address marked up consistently across the site.
- At least 80 Google reviews with a 4.6★ minimum — not the highest in town necessarily, but high enough to be in the credible band.
- A HealthGrades, Yelp or Zocdoc profile that AI engines can cross-reference against the practice site.
What didn't matter much: paid Google Ads spend, total domain authority, social-media activity. The cited practices weren't the biggest — they were the most structurally readable.
Where 88% of practices fail
The 3,800 uncited practice mentions almost all fell into one of three failure modes:
- No FAQ content. 71% of uncited practices had no Q&A content on their site. AI engines had nothing to quote.
- Inconsistent NAP (name/address/phone) across directories. 53% had at least one major directory listing with the wrong address or phone — enough to make the engine hesitate to cite.
- Empty or auto-generated GBP Q&A. Patients ask, nobody from the practice ever answers. AI engines treat that as a low-trust signal.
The 7-step fix
- Audit your GBP Q&A. Answer every patient question yourself. Add 8–10 questions you wish patients would ask, then answer those too.
- Build a dedicated FAQ page on your site with 15+ questions. Mark it up with FAQPage schema.
- Standardise NAP. Use the same exact format on your site, GBP, Yelp, HealthGrades, Zocdoc, and your state dental association directory.
- Add Dentist schema to your homepage and contact page — including
openingHours,acceptedInsurance, andavailableService. - Hit 80 Google reviews minimum. Use a structured request flow — see our dental review service for HIPAA-compliant scripts.
- Get cited on one credible third-party site — local press, dental association directory, or a credentialing site like the ADA Find-A-Dentist.
- Re-run the AI query test monthly. You'll see your name move into the cited band by month 3 in most cases.
"The cited practices weren't the biggest — they were the most structurally readable."
— From the study findings
