900 million people used ChatGPT last week.
That number doubled in 12 months. It will double again. And according to OpenAI's own published data from January 2026, more than 40 million of those users ask it healthcare questions every single day, with 7 in 10 of those conversations happening outside normal clinic hours, when they can't just call their provider. Patients in your city are already in that number. Some of them are asking about dentists right now.
The question isn't whether ChatGPT is relevant to your practice. The question is whether your practice is visible when it is.
ChatGPT and Google are not the same thing — and that distinction matters
Let's get one thing out of the way: ChatGPT is not replacing Google. Data from multiple independent studies shows that 95% of ChatGPT users also visit Google in the same month. The two tools coexist.
But they handle different moments in the patient journey.
Google handles intent-driven search: a patient who already knows what they want types "emergency dentist Austin" and gets a list of results. ChatGPT handles advisory, exploratory searches: "should I get implants or a bridge?" "what should I ask my dentist about Invisalign?" "which dentists in [city] have the best reviews for families?"
Research analysing 8,500 ChatGPT prompts found that local intent queries trigger a live web search in 59% of cases — the highest rate of any query category. When someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a dentist, it actually goes and searches. It pulls current data. It looks at what's verifiable.
If your practice isn't in what it searches, you don't get named.
The shift that should concern you right now, not in 2030
A lot of the writing about AI search frames it as a future concern. "Get ready for 2030." "Prepare for the next generation of patients."
That framing undersells what's already happening.
Patients are already using ChatGPT to find dentists in your city. The number is relatively small right now — but it's uncrowded. Which creates a window that is about to close.
Here's the analogy that makes this concrete. The practices that invested in Google SEO in 2010 and 2012 now have domain authority scores built over a decade of consistent signals — reviews, backlinks, citations, content. A practice starting Google SEO today competes against those accumulated signals. It can be done, but it takes longer and costs more than it would have in 2010.
The same dynamic is beginning in AI search. The practices that build their AI visibility foundation now will be entrenched by the time the majority of patients start using these tools to find providers. The practices that wait will be retrofitting, not building.
And in the meantime, here's the practical reality: in most US cities, essentially no dental practices have done the work required to appear in ChatGPT recommendations. Which means if you do it, you capture nearly all of the patients currently asking AI tools for a dentist recommendation in your area. Visitors referred by AI tools convert 13% higher than organic search visitors — these are already high-quality patients. You're capturing close to 100% of them rather than competing for a fraction.
What ChatGPT actually does when someone asks for a dentist recommendation
Most dentists assume ChatGPT pulls from some internal database of businesses. It doesn't.
ChatGPT uses Bing as its web search backbone. When a patient asks "who are the best dentists in New York for Invisalign?" ChatGPT performs a live Bing search, retrieves results, and synthesises them into a response. It names practices it can verify — practices that are indexed in Bing, confirmed in Bing's local data, and described clearly enough in their own content that ChatGPT can pull a confident answer.
The implications:
If your site is not in Bing's index, ChatGPT cannot find you. Your Google ranking is irrelevant. This is the most common reason well-ranked dental practices are completely invisible to ChatGPT.
If your Google Business Profile isn't confirmed in Bing Places, ChatGPT doesn't have your local data. GBP and Bing Places are separate systems. Most practices have never touched Bing Places.
If your website content doesn't answer questions with specific verifiable facts, ChatGPT won't cite it. A page that says "we offer Invisalign treatment at our Austin office" gives ChatGPT almost nothing to work with. A page that says "Invisalign at [practice] takes 12–18 months for most adult cases, costs $3,800–5,500, and is led by Dr. [Name] who has placed 200+ cases" gives ChatGPT four specific facts it can cite with confidence.
If your schema markup doesn't tell AI systems who you are in structured format, you're making their job harder. Schema markup is the layer of code in your website that tells AI tools, in machine-readable language, exactly what kind of business you are, who works there, what you offer, and where you are. Without it, ChatGPT has to infer all of that from unstructured text — which is less reliable and results in fewer citations.
How to actually appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews
Five steps. The first one takes five minutes and you can do it right now.
Step 1 — Check if ChatGPT can even find you (5 minutes)
Open Bing.com . Type site:yourdomain.com
Step 2 — Claim Bing Places for Business
Go to bingplaces.com . Claim your practice listing and verify it. Completely separate from your Google Business Profile. It feeds Bing Maps, Bing local results, and ChatGPT's local recommendations. Most dental practices have never opened this page.
Step 3 — Add the right schema markup to your website
The key types for a dental practice: Dentist, AggregateRating with your current review count and score, FAQPage on every service page, and Physician for each named dentist. This structured data tells AI systems who you are in a format they can read directly. Without it, you're making ChatGPT guess. With it, you become a clearly citable source.
Step 4 — Rewrite your service pages to answer questions directly
Go to your Invisalign page and read the first paragraph. Does it contain: how long treatment takes? What it costs at your practice? How many cases your dentist has completed? The name of the dentist? If not, ChatGPT has almost nothing to cite. Lead with direct, specific, factual answers. This also improves your Google rankings simultaneously — two problems, one fix.
Step 5 — Build consistent review velocity
1 in 4 ChatGPT users submits a healthcare prompt every week according to OpenAI's own research. PBHS
Why most dentists won't do any of this — and what that means for you
Most practices won't act on this for two reasons.
First, the burned-by-agencies problem. If you've paid for SEO and seen nothing move, "optimise for AI search" sounds like the next version of the same pitch. That skepticism is earned. The difference here is that steps 1 and 2 are verifiable in ten minutes at no cost. You can confirm your Bing indexing status and your Bing Places listing right now before deciding whether any of this is worth pursuing.
Second, AI search feels abstract. It's hard to see the direct line between "submit my sitemap to Bing" and "new patients call my practice." But the mechanism is the same as Google's loop — just different infrastructure underneath. Bing index ? ChatGPT can find you ? ChatGPT recommends you ? patient visits your site ? patient books.
And the competitive reality: in your local market, right now, almost nobody has done steps 1 and 2. The first practice in your area that completes all five steps is the practice ChatGPT names when anyone in your city asks for a dentist recommendation. Until another practice catches up, you have essentially no competition for that patient.
Your immediate first win — do this before you close this tab
Open a new tab. Go to Bing.com . Type site:yourdomain.com
If you see your pages: good. Now check bingplaces.com and confirm your practice is claimed and optimised. If it isn't, you're invisible to ChatGPT's local recommendations regardless of how well you rank on Google.
If you see zero results: your practice doesn't exist to ChatGPT. Go to bing.com/webmasters, verify your site, submit your sitemap. Ten minutes.
That's the first win. Immediate, verifiable, and the foundation everything else builds on.
For the full picture of what it takes to build complete AI visibility for a dental practice — the schema markup, the content structure, the review velocity system, and how it compounds back into Google rankings — I've put together a detailed guide specifically for dental practices: heavyclicks.space/dental-ai-visibility
Divine is the founder of Heavyclick, a dental web studio that builds patient-converting websites with full SEO architecture, automated review generation, and AI search visibility. Results guaranteed or we work free.