How to get your dental practice recommended by ChatGPT

Readable, verified and trusted

Every AI answer about local businesses rests on three things. Miss one and you drop out of the answer even when the other two are strong.

• Readable

  One page per procedure: implants, crowns, Invisalign, extractions, cleanings, emergency care. Price ranges in plain text. The insurance plans you accept, listed by name. Whether you are taking new patients, said in words on the page. Dentist, MedicalBusiness and FAQPage structured data so a machine reads the same facts a patient does.

• Verified

  The same practice name, address, phone, hours and procedure list on the ADA Find-a-Dentist directory, your insurance carriers' provider finders, Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Google Business Profile and Bing Places. ChatGPT search runs on Bing, and Bing Places is the listing almost no practice has touched.

• Trusted

  Recent reviews that mention the procedure by name, dentist bios with the dental school and years in practice, and a site that has been updated this year.

Fix them in that order. A perfect insurance directory listing pointing at a website AI cannot read still leaves you out of the answer.

The pages that get a practice named

AI answers questions. Your website has to contain the answers, on pages, in text.

• One page per procedure

  Not a single services page with fourteen items on it. The assistant needs a page it can point at for the exact thing the person described, whether that is a cracked tooth or a clear aligner consultation.

• A cost page, per procedure

  How much a crown, an implant or a cleaning without insurance runs at your practice, as a range, and what moves the number. Cost questions are among the most common things people ask an assistant, and practices that state nothing get skipped for practices that state something.

• An insurance page

  The plans you are in network with, by name, and what you do for people who are out of network or uninsured. This single page answers a question that otherwise sends the patient to a carrier directory where you may not be listed correctly.

• A new patient page

  Whether you are accepting new patients, how soon the first appointment usually is, what the first visit includes, and what to bring.

• An FAQ on every procedure page

  Does it hurt, how long does it take, how long does it last, what is the recovery. Three or four sentences each, in ordinary words.

Put the answer at the top of each page. Two or three sentences a reader, or a model, can lift whole and be right.

The directories AI reads for dentists

Dentistry has more third-party records than most local industries, because insurance carriers keep their own. That is an opportunity and a liability at the same time.

• ADA Find-a-Dentist

  The professional record. Check that your listing shows the current practice name, address and specialty.

• Insurance provider directories

  Delta Dental, Cigna, Aetna, MetLife and whoever else you are in network with. These are the records that answer which dentist near me takes my plan, and they are wrong more often than any other listing a practice owns.

• Healthgrades and Zocdoc

  Both are heavily cited in health answers. Zocdoc also carries availability, which is exactly what the accepting new patients question is about.

• Google Business Profile

  The right primary category, real hours including any Saturday hours, the service list, and the questions section seeded with the questions patients actually ask at the desk.

• Bing Places

  Twenty minutes, free, and ChatGPT search runs on Bing. The most skipped item on the list.

The job is not being everywhere. It is being identical everywhere. An old address on one carrier directory is enough to make an assistant name a practice it is more sure about.

Reviews, privacy and what not to claim

Reviews are read as text. He replaced a cracked molar with a crown the same week is a sentence an assistant can use. Great office, five stars, is not. Ask for reviews after the appointment, with a direct link, and ask patients to say what they came in for.

Do not answer a review with anything about the patient's care. Confirming that somebody is your patient, or naming their treatment in a public reply, is a patient privacy problem under HIPAA. Thank them, invite them to call the office, and stop there.

Do not claim outcomes. Pain free, permanent, guaranteed and best in the city are the phrases that cause trouble with state dental boards and with advertising rules. You never need them. The facts, the ranges and the reviews are more persuasive anyway.

Have your clinical lead read every procedure page before it goes live. It is a fifteen minute job that keeps a marketing page from making a clinical claim nobody at the practice would make out loud.