How Do I Get My Business Recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini?

As more patients use artificial intelligence to research healthcare providers, clinic owners are asking an important question: How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini?

There is no form you can complete, advertising package you can purchase or piece of code that guarantees an AI recommendation. However, you can make it easier for AI-powered platforms to find, understand and verify information about your healthcare practice.

This requires a combination of traditional search engine optimization (SEO), accurate business information, helpful content, technical accessibility and credible third-party references. This broader approach is often called Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO.

For Canadian nurse practitioners, physicians, dentists, chiropractors, physiotherapists, mental health professionals and other healthcare providers, GEO is becoming an important extension of an effective digital marketing strategy.

How AI Is Changing the Way Patients Search for Healthcare

Traditional online searches are often short and keyword-focused:

• Dentist in Burlington
• Nurse practitioner clinic Toronto
• Chiropractor near me
• Private medical clinic Calgary

These searches generally produce a list of websites, map listings, advertisements and directories. The patient then visits several pages and compares the available providers.

AI platforms allow people to ask much more detailed questions, such as:

• Which dental clinics in the Greater Toronto Area offer direct insurance billing and evening appointments?
• Can you recommend a nurse practitioner clinic in Ontario that offers virtual consultations?
• Which chiropractors near me provide treatment for sports injuries?
• What private clinics in Calgary offer preventative health assessments?
• Where can I find a physiotherapy clinic that treats runners and offers online booking?

Instead of returning only a list of links, AI-powered platforms may summarize information, compare providers and suggest possible next steps. They may also provide links that allow the user to investigate the businesses or sources included in the response.

This changes the goal for healthcare practices. It is no longer enough for your website to contain a few relevant keywords. Your online presence should clearly explain:

• Who you are
• Where you are located
• Which services you provide
• Who provides those services
• What credentials your practitioners hold
• Which patients or conditions you serve
• How appointments work
• What makes your practice relevant to a particular request
• Where your information can be independently confirmed

The clearer and more consistent this information is, the easier it becomes for both search engines and AI platforms to understand your practice.

Can You Guarantee That ChatGPT or Gemini Will Recommend a Business?

No legitimate agency can guarantee that a business will be recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini or another AI platform.

OpenAI explains that ChatGPT Search uses multiple factors to identify relevant and reliable information, but placement is not guaranteed. Google similarly states that meeting its technical and content requirements does not guarantee that a page will be crawled, indexed or displayed.

What businesses can do is improve their eligibility, relevance and online credibility.

For healthcare practices, this means building a digital presence that provides accurate, accessible and well-supported information across the practice website, search engines, professional registries, business profiles and other reputable sources.

Traditional SEO vs. Generative Engine Optimization

SEO and GEO are closely connected. GEO does not replace traditional SEO; it builds on many of the same foundations.

Google states that its established SEO best practices remain relevant to its generative AI search features. A page must generally be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search before it can appear as a supporting source in Google AI experiences. You can read more in Google's official guidance on AI features and websites.

The main difference is the type of visibility each approach emphasizes.

A strong healthcare marketing strategy should support both forms of discovery.

What Makes a Healthcare Practice Easier for AI Platforms to Understand?

AI platforms may obtain current information from search indexes, publicly accessible websites and other online sources. The precise systems and sources can vary by platform and query.

Several practical factors can improve how clearly your business is represented online.

A Clearly Defined Healthcare Business

Your website should explicitly state your practice name, practice type, location and primary services. Do not make visitors or search systems piece this information together from vague marketing language.

For example, this statement is unclear:

We deliver innovative solutions that help you feel your best.

A more informative version would be:

ABC Health is a nurse practitioner-led clinic in London, Ontario, offering preventative health assessments, menopause consultations and virtual follow-up appointments for adults.

The second version establishes the business, provider type, location, services and patient group in one concise paragraph.

Detailed Practitioner Information

Each regulated healthcare professional should have a useful biography or profile page where appropriate. The page can include:

• Full professional name
• Professional designation
• Education and relevant training
• Professional interests
• Services provided
• Languages spoken
• Provincial registration or licensing information
• Professional association memberships
• Clinic locations
• Links to applicable official registries

Only publish credentials and affiliations that can be confirmed. Registration numbers should be displayed only when appropriate and permitted by the practitioner’s regulatory body.

These pages help prospective patients evaluate the provider while creating clearer connections between the practitioner, practice, location and services.

Specific Service Pages

A single page containing a long list of services provides limited context. Important services should generally have their own substantive pages.

A well-developed service page can explain:

• What the service is
• Who may benefit from it
• Who provides it
• What an appointment may involve
• Whether a referral is required
• Whether the service is delivered in person, virtually or both
• Fees or insurance information when applicable
• Limitations, risks or situations requiring different care
• How to book an appointment

The purpose is not to create a page for every possible keyword. It is to provide genuinely useful information about the services prospective patients are trying to understand.

Consistent Business Information

Your practice name, address, phone number, website address and hours should be consistent wherever the business appears online.

Important sources may include:

• Your website
• Google Business Profile
• Bing Places
• Provincial regulatory directories
• Professional association profiles
• Healthcare directories
• Social media profiles
• Local business directories
• Relevant hospital or clinic affiliation pages

Minor formatting differences are usually not a problem. Contradictory information is more concerning. If your website says the clinic closes at 7:00 p.m. but Google says 5:00 p.m., patients and digital platforms have no reliable way to know which information is current.

Seven Steps to Improve Your Chances of Appearing in AI Recommendations

1. Make Sure AI Search Crawlers Can Access Your Website

Your website cannot be considered as a current web source if the applicable search crawler is blocked from accessing it.

OpenAI uses OAI-SearchBot to surface websites in ChatGPT search results. Its documentation recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt file and ensuring your hosting provider or content delivery network permits traffic from OpenAI’s published IP addresses. OAI-SearchBot is separate from GPTBot, which is associated with model training. You can allow search access without making the same decision about training access.

Website owners can review the official OpenAI crawler documentation for current user-agent information.

You should also verify that:

• Important pages are not blocked in robots.txt
• Pages do not contain unintended noindex directives
• Your server returns a successful status code
• Your content is available without requiring a login
• Important wording appears as readable text
• Internal links connect your important service pages
• Your XML sitemap includes the correct canonical URLs
• Security services are not unintentionally blocking legitimate crawlers

Crawlability creates eligibility, not guaranteed placement.

2. Strengthen Your Traditional SEO Foundation

Generative search still depends heavily on the discoverability and quality of online information.

For Google’s AI features, the company specifically recommends established SEO practices such as allowing crawling, using internal links, providing a good page experience, making important content available as text and ensuring structured data matches the visible page.

Your healthcare website should therefore have:

• A clear page hierarchy
• Descriptive title tags and meta descriptions
• One primary H1 heading per page
• Useful H2 and H3 headings
• Logical internal links
• Fast, mobile-friendly pages
• Original service content
• Accurate canonical tags
• An XML sitemap
• Google Search Console and analytics tracking

If a website has serious crawling, indexing or content-quality problems, adding a few question-and-answer sections will not solve the underlying issue.

3. Answer the Questions Patients Actually Ask

Healthcare content should address real patient needs rather than being written solely to accommodate keywords.

Useful questions might include:

• Do I need a referral?
• How long does an appointment take?
• Is this service covered by provincial healthcare?
• Do you offer direct insurance billing?
• Can the appointment be completed virtually?
• What should I bring to my first appointment?
• Which practitioner will provide the service?
• Are evening or weekend appointments available?
• What happens after the initial consultation?
• When should I seek urgent or emergency care instead?

Use these questions as headings when they fit naturally. Provide a clear answer immediately underneath, followed by any necessary details or qualifications.

There is no universal word count required for an AI-friendly answer. Some questions need one paragraph, while medically sensitive subjects may require a more detailed explanation.

Accuracy and usefulness are more important than forcing every answer into an arbitrary length.

4. Demonstrate First-Hand Expertise

Generic healthcare articles are widely available. Your strongest opportunity is to publish information that reflects the genuine experience of your practice and practitioners.

This could include:

• A clinician explaining what patients can expect during an appointment
• Common questions your reception team receives
• Original commentary from a regulated practitioner
• Local referral or treatment considerations
• An explanation of how your clinic approaches a particular service
• An anonymized case example, where appropriate and properly authorized
• Original surveys or patient-experience insights
• Information about accessibility, language support or sensory accommodations

Google’s current guidance for generative search emphasizes unique, useful and non-commodity content rather than material that simply repeats what is already available across the internet.

For medical content, consider including a qualified reviewer and a clearly displayed reviewed or updated date. This gives readers important context about who is responsible for the information.

5. Add Appropriate Structured Data

Structured data is code that describes the content and entities on a webpage. It can help search engines understand information about an organization, local business, practitioner, service, article or frequently asked questions.

Depending on the website and page, relevant Schema.org types may include:

• Organization
• LocalBusiness
• MedicalBusiness
• Physician
• Dentist
• MedicalClinic
• Person
• Service
• BlogPosting
• BreadcrumbList

The most appropriate type depends on the practice and the information actually displayed.

Structured data should accurately match the visible content. Do not add services, awards, credentials, ratings or locations to your schema if they are not supported on the page.

It is also important to understand what schema can and cannot do. Structured data can improve machine readability and may help a page qualify for certain search enhancements, but it does not guarantee rankings or AI recommendations. Google specifically advises businesses not to overfocus on structured data as an AI-search tactic. Its structured data documentation explains its role in helping Google understand page content.

6. Build a Verifiable Online Reputation

AI platforms may compare information from multiple online sources. A practice that is described consistently by credible third parties is easier to verify than one that exists only on its own website.

Potential sources include:

• Provincial regulatory college listings
• Professional association profiles
• Hospital or health-network directories
• Local media coverage
• Relevant community organizations
• Professional interviews
• Conference speaker profiles
• Reputable healthcare directories
• Google Business Profile
• Genuine patient reviews

The goal is not to manufacture large numbers of mentions or publish identical profiles across low-quality directories. Focus on accurate profiles and reputable sources that make sense for the profession and community.

Reviews should always be collected and managed in accordance with the privacy, advertising and testimonial requirements applying to the profession and province. Healthcare practices should never reveal that a reviewer is a patient or disclose details about their care in a public response.

7. Keep Your Information Current

AI visibility is not a one-time project. Services, practitioners, hours, locations and booking procedures change.

Establish a schedule for reviewing:

• Practitioner biographies
• Clinic hours
• Service descriptions
• Fees and coverage information
• Contact information
• Professional registrations
• Booking links
• Medical sources
• Blog content
• Structured data
• External directory listings

Outdated healthcare information can undermine patient trust and create inconsistencies across the web.

Healthcare Content Requires a Higher Standard

Healthcare information can influence decisions about a person’s health and well-being. That makes accuracy, transparency and professional oversight especially important.

Before publishing healthcare content:

• Verify medical claims with trustworthy sources
• Have clinical material reviewed by an appropriately qualified professional
• Avoid promising treatment outcomes
• Distinguish general education from personal medical advice
• Clearly identify practitioner credentials
• Include emergency guidance where the topic requires it
• Review provincial advertising and professional-college requirements
• Protect patient confidentiality
• Update content when standards or services change

Marketing content should help people understand their options without exaggerating benefits, minimizing risks or presenting promotional statements as medical facts.

Privacy claims also need to be precise. Do not say that a website, form or platform is "PIPEDA compliant," "PHIPA compliant" or "HIPAA compliant" based only on SSL encryption or secure hosting. Privacy compliance depends on how the practice collects, uses, stores, accesses, discloses and protects personal information across its operations.

Common GEO Mistakes Healthcare Practices Should Avoid

Making Unsupported Claims

Statements such as "the best dental clinic in Canada" or "the leading chiropractor in Toronto" are difficult to verify unless they are supported by a legitimate and clearly identified award or assessment.

Use specific facts instead:

• Accepting new patients
• Providing evening appointments
• Offering online booking
• Supporting direct insurance billing
• Delivering care in multiple languages
• Having an accessible clinic entrance
• Providing a clearly defined specialty or service

Publishing Generic AI-Generated Blogs

Producing dozens of lightly edited articles can create a large website without building meaningful authority. Each article should offer something useful, accurate and relevant to the patients the practice serves.

Creating Near-Duplicate Location Pages

Changing only the city name across multiple pages produces little local value. A location page should contain genuine information about the clinic, practitioners, services, accessibility, parking, transit, neighbourhood and appointment options in that location.

Treating Schema as a Shortcut

Schema can clarify information, but it cannot compensate for vague content, weak reputation signals, contradictory business details or an inaccessible website.

Forgetting About Conversion

Being mentioned in an AI response has limited value if the patient reaches a confusing or untrustworthy website.

Every important page should provide a clear next step, such as:

• Book an appointment
• Request a consultation
• Call the clinic
• Ask a question
• Review fees
• Meet the practitioners
• Confirm eligibility for a service

How to Measure AI Search Visibility

AI responses can change between users, platforms and individual searches, so tracking visibility requires more than checking one prompt occasionally.

Start with a list of realistic questions prospective patients might ask. Include different services, locations, patient needs and appointment requirements.

For each prompt, document:

• Whether the practice appears
• Which competitors appear
• Which sources are cited
• Whether the practice information is accurate
• Which relevant services or details are missing
• Whether the response links to the practice website
• Whether the cited page receives referral traffic

You can also monitor referral traffic in your analytics platform and review landing pages receiving visitors from AI services. Continue monitoring conventional organic traffic, search impressions, local visibility, calls, form submissions and appointment bookings.

The most meaningful result is not simply being mentioned. It is attracting appropriate prospective patients and helping them take the next step.

A Practical Healthcare GEO Checklist

Build Visibility Across Traditional and AI-Powered Search

Getting your healthcare business recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini is not about discovering a single GEO trick. It is about establishing a clear, useful and trustworthy digital presence.

The practices most likely to build sustainable visibility are those that combine strong technical SEO with detailed service information, demonstrable practitioner expertise, consistent business listings and content that genuinely helps patients make informed decisions.

At BloomHealth, we help Canadian healthcare professionals improve their websites and digital marketing for both traditional search and emerging AI-powered discovery. Our approach brings together healthcare website development, SEO, AI search optimization, content marketing and patient-focused conversion strategies.

If you would like to understand how AI platforms currently interpret your healthcare practice, contact the BloomHealth team to discuss an AI search and digital performance assessment.