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How dentists get recommended by AI assistants

Updated · 8 min read · By the SearchCrow team

AI assistants recommend dental practices whose basic facts they can find and check: whether you take new NHS or private patients, what you charge, when you can see an emergency and what other patients say. Get your NHS website profile, Google Business Profile and treatment pages accurate and consistent, write them within the GDC's advertising rules, and collect genuine reviews from every patient. Nothing here is a trick; it is making the right information easy to find.

Key takeaways

  • Patients ask AI very specific questions ("NHS dentist taking new patients near me", "emergency dentist open Saturday"). Practices that answer those questions in plain text get mentioned.
  • In England, your NHS website profile is a contractual obligation as well as a visibility asset. Confirm it every quarter and keep "accepting new patients" honest.
  • GDC advertising guidance limits what you can claim. "Specialist" is reserved for dentists on a GDC specialist list.
  • NHS.UK's patient Ratings and Reviews service was taken offline in mid-2025, so put your review effort into platforms that are still live.
  • Check what AI assistants say about you once a month, using the same questions each time.

What do patients ask AI when they're looking for a dentist?

They ask practical questions about access, price and anxiety, often with a place name attached. The prompts below are illustrative examples of the kinds of questions patients ask, not measured search volumes.

IntentExample prompts (illustrative)
Urgent"Emergency dentist open on Saturday in Leeds", "my crown has come off, where can I be seen today in Cardiff?"
Comparison"Invisalign or fixed braces for an adult, and which practices in Bristol offer both?"
Local"NHS dentist taking new adult patients near Norwich", "dentist near Clapham Junction with step-free access"
Price"How much is a private check-up and hygienist appointment in Manchester?", "cost of a dental implant in Glasgow"
Trust"Dentist good with nervous patients in Brighton", "is [practice name] a good dentist?", "does [dentist name] have a GDC registration?"

Where does AI get its answers about dentists?

From the same public sources a patient could open: your website, your Google listing, official NHS and regulator pages, and review platforms. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on pages that are indexed and eligible to show a snippet, with no extra requirements (Google Search Central, 2025). ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude run their own search crawlers (covered in step 8 below).

SourceWhat it isWhy it matters for dentists
Your websiteTreatment, fees, team and access pagesThe only place you control every word. Must follow GDC advertising guidance.
Google Business ProfileYour listing on Google Search and MapsGoogle says complete, accurate information and more reviews help local ranking (Google Business Profile Help, n.d.).
NHS website service profile (England)The NHS "Find a dentist" search and practice pagesShows practices accepting new patients for routine care and urgent or specialist options (NHS, n.d.).
GDC registerThe General Dental Council's public registerPatients can check a dentist's registration and specialist list status by name, town or GDC number (GDC, n.d.).
DoctifyUK healthcare review and booking platformLists UK dental clinics and states that "every review on Doctify is a verified patient review" (Doctify, n.d.).
CQC (England)Regulator that registers and inspects dental providersInspection reports are published on the CQC website.
US equivalentsZocdoc, Yelp, state dental board licence lookupsZocdoc lets patients book and review dentists. Yelp asks businesses not to solicit reviews (Yelp, n.d.).

One change catches many practices out. NHS.UK emailed health services on 2 June 2025 to say its Ratings and Reviews service would be taken offline by the end of June (Care Opinion, 2025). Old advice telling you to collect NHS reviews is out of date.

Work through these in order. Steps 1 to 3 can be done this week.

  1. Confirm your NHS website profile (England, NHS or mixed practices). Practices must confirm their profile every quarter (by 30 June, 30 September, 31 December and 31 March) in NHS Profile Manager. That covers accepting new NHS patients, contact details, opening times, services and facilities, and the NHSBSA says the deadlines are part of your contractual obligations (NHSBSA, 2024). Only say you are accepting new patients if you are.

  2. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Use your real-world practice name with no added keywords or towns, choose the fewest and most specific categories, and set hours including any emergency sessions (Google Business Profile Help, n.d.). Google allows individual dentists to have their own profile if they serve the public directly at a verified location, but not separate profiles for each specialty, and support staff should not have profiles.

  3. Rewrite your website within GDC advertising guidance. The GDC advertising guidance requires your GDC registration number wherever information includes your name. Practice websites should show the practice name and address, contact details, the GDC's contact details or a link to its site, complaints information and the date the site was last updated. Adverts must say whether the practice is NHS, mixed or wholly private (GDC, 2013). These are also exactly the facts an AI assistant needs.

  4. Write one page per treatment, in the words patients use. Cover what it is, who does it at your practice (with GDC number), who it suits, how many visits it takes, and a "from" price. GDC guidance says promotions must state that a treatment may not suit every patient and depends on a satisfactory assessment, and that you must not compare your team's skills or qualifications with other dentists'. If you offer facial aesthetics, the ASA's rule that Botox is a prescription-only medicine that cannot be advertised to the public applies to you too: promote a consultation, not the product (ASA, 2025).

  5. Publish fees as text, not a PDF or image. A plain HTML fees page, split into NHS and private sections, answers price prompts directly. Keep it current, because an out-of-date price that an assistant repeats is worse than none.

  6. Add Dentist structured data. Google recommends the most specific LocalBusiness subtype, with properties such as address, name, telephone, url, opening hours and priceRange (Google Search Central, n.d.). Schema.org's Dentist type sits under LocalBusiness and MedicalBusiness (Schema.org, n.d.). Google says AI features need no special markup, and that structured data should match visible text, so treat schema as a tidy statement of facts you already publish.

  7. Collect reviews the same way from every patient. Google lets you ask for reviews with a link or QR code but prohibits incentives (Google Business Profile Help, n.d.), and its policy bans selectively asking only happy patients (Google, n.d.). Since April 2025, UK law bans fake reviews and reviews that conceal an incentive, as explained in the CMA's guidance (CMA, 2025). Send the same request after every appointment, reply to every review without disclosing any clinical details, and consider one verified-review platform such as Doctify alongside Google.

  8. Make sure AI crawlers can read your site. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers (OpenAI, n.d.). Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot (Perplexity, n.d.), and Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce your visibility in Claude's search answers (Anthropic, n.d.). Ask whoever manages your site to check robots.txt and any firewall or security plugin.

Mistakes that keep dental practices out of AI answers

  • Claiming specialist status you don't hold. "Implant specialist" or "orthodontist" without being on a GDC specialist list breaches GDC guidance, and an assistant may repeat it. Use "special interest in" instead.
  • An NHS profile that says "accepting new patients" when you are not. It creates conflicting information about you and angry phone calls.
  • Fees locked in a PDF or image. Price questions are common, and a page that can't be read plainly can't be quoted.
  • No emergency information. If you see urgent patients, say when and how on your website and Google profile. If you don't, say where patients should go.
  • Separate Google profiles for each treatment. Google's guidelines don't allow a practitioner to create several profiles for different specialties.
  • Chasing NHS website reviews. That service went offline in 2025.
  • A security setting that blocks search crawlers. Some hosting firewalls block unfamiliar bots by default.

How do you check whether AI recommends your practice?

Ask the assistants the questions your patients ask, and write down what comes back. Do this monthly so you can see change over time.

  1. Pick 10 prompts from the table above, using your town and two neighbouring areas.
  2. Run each in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode), Gemini, Claude and Copilot. Use a logged-out or private window where you can, because answers vary by user and by day.
  3. Record whether you are named, which competitors are named, and which sources are cited.
  4. Where an answer gets a fact wrong (hours, NHS status, fees), trace it to the source and fix that source.
  5. In Google Search Console, AI feature traffic is included in the Performance report under the "Web" search type (Google Search Central, 2025).

SearchCrow runs this kind of check for you. It asks the major AI assistants the questions patients ask about dentists in your area, shows whether your practice is mentioned and which sources they lean on, and suggests what to fix first. It is built for single practices and small groups, not enterprise marketing teams.

FAQ

Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my dental practice? Usually because it can't find clear, consistent facts about you. Assistants that search the web build answers from pages they can read: your website, your Google Business Profile, the NHS website and review platforms. If your site hides fees in a PDF, doesn't say whether you take new NHS or private patients, or has no emergency information, a competitor that states those things plainly is easier to recommend.

Can I call myself a specialist on my website to stand out in AI answers? Only if you are on one of the GDC's specialist lists. GDC guidance says dentists who are not on a list must not use titles that imply specialist status, and must not say they are "specialising in" a treatment. You can say you have a "special interest in", are "experienced in" or that your "practice is limited to" a treatment. Whatever you write may be repeated by an AI assistant, so it has to be accurate.

Does my NHS website profile matter if I'm a mixed practice? Yes. In England, practices with NHS contracts must confirm their NHS website profile every quarter, including whether they are accepting new NHS patients, opening times, services and facilities. Patients and the services that answer their questions use that page. If it says you are accepting new patients when you are not, you will get frustrated callers and inconsistent information about you across the web.

Should I still ask patients to review us on the NHS website? No. NHS.UK told services in June 2025 that its Ratings and Reviews service would be taken offline by the end of that month. Point patients to platforms that are still live, such as your Google Business Profile or a verified-review platform like Doctify, and ask every patient in the same way without any incentive.

What structured data should a dental practice use? Use LocalBusiness markup with the Dentist type from schema.org, which sits under MedicalBusiness. Include your name, address, phone, website and opening hours, and make sure every value matches what is visible on the page. Google says no special markup is needed for its AI features, so treat schema as a way to state your facts clearly, not as a shortcut.

Sources

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