Ask most dental practice owners how patients find them and you'll get a version of the same answer: Google, word of mouth, and maybe a listing on a dentistry directory somewhere.
That's not wrong. But it's increasingly incomplete.
Something has shifted in the last couple of years - quietly, without a big announcement - and dental practices that haven't noticed are losing patients to competitors who probably aren't even aware they're winning them.
The way people search for a dentist has changed
For a long time, finding a dentist meant one of two things: asking a friend, or typing "dentist near me" into Google and picking from the first few results.
Both of those still happen. But a third behaviour is now well established - and it's growing fast.
People ask AI.
"Can you recommend a good family dentist in Derby?" "Who's the best dentist for nervous adults near Belper?" "I need a dentist that does NHS patients in Chesterfield - who's taking new registrations?"
These questions are being asked every day in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and Copilot. And the answer isn't a list of ten links. It's a recommendation - two or three practices, named directly, with a reason behind the choice.
If your practice isn't one of them, those patients don't find you. They don't bounce off your website. They don't scroll past you. They simply never see you at all.
Why dentistry is particularly affected
Dental searches are almost always local and almost always high intent. Someone searching for a dentist isn't browsing. They need one - often quite urgently, whether that's an emergency or just the moment they've finally got round to registering somewhere new.
That combination - local, high intent, one clear decision to make - is exactly where AI excels. People have started to notice that asking AI "who's a good dentist near me" gives them a much more useful answer than scrolling through a page of links and trying to compare websites.
There's something else worth naming, too. Nobody loves going to the dentist. (This is not a controversial statement.) There's a reason patients spend more time choosing a dentist than choosing a plumber or a restaurant. Trust matters enormously. And AI has become a trusted research tool in a way that advertising and even Google results haven't always managed to be.
When AI recommends a practice, patients often take that recommendation seriously.
What AI looks at when it recommends a dentist
This is the part most practice owners haven't been told - and it's genuinely useful to understand.
AI doesn't look at your website the way a patient does. It doesn't appreciate the design, read every page, or click around to get a feel for the place. It reads your website for structure, clarity, and specificity - and then it cross-references what it finds there against everything else it knows about you.
Can it understand exactly what you offer?
A lot of dental websites have a single "Treatments" page with a list of services and a paragraph or two under each one. For traditional Google search, that's not terrible. For AI, it's not enough.
AI needs to understand the detail of what you do. Not just "we offer orthodontics" but what kinds of orthodontic treatment, who they're suitable for, roughly how long they take, what the process involves. Not just "nervous patients welcome" but what you actually do differently for them - sedation options, a quieter appointment time, a particular approach from the team.
A practice with individual, detailed pages for each treatment it offers - written in plain English, not clinical jargon - gives AI far more to work with. And AI tends to recommend the practices it understands best.
Does the information about your practice add up?
AI cross-references. It's looking at your website, your Google Business Profile, any directory listings you appear on, and whatever else it can find about your practice.
If your website says you're at 14 High Street and your Google Business Profile says 14a High Street - or one lists a mobile number and the other lists a landline - those small inconsistencies create doubt. Not doubt that a human would notice and worry about, but doubt in the AI's confidence that it actually understands your practice correctly. And an uncertain AI is one that recommends someone else.
Consistent, matching information across every place your practice appears is one of the most straightforward things you can get right.
What do your reviews actually say?
Star ratings matter - a practice with 4.8 stars is going to make a better impression than one with 3.2. But in an AI world, the text of your reviews matters almost as much as the number.
AI reads reviews for patterns. If multiple patients mention that your team is brilliant with nervous patients, or that you explain everything clearly, or that you got them an appointment quickly - those patterns become part of how AI describes and recommends your practice.
If your reviews are mostly short ("Great dentist, would recommend") they're less useful to AI than specific ones ("I've been terrified of the dentist for twenty years. The team at [practice] were so patient with me - genuinely the first time I've left without feeling awful about the whole experience"). The specifics are what AI can work with.
This isn't a reason to try to game your reviews. It's a reason to encourage happy patients to say what they specifically valued about their visit, rather than just leaving a star rating.
Is your website structured in a way AI can actually read?
There's a layer underneath the visible content of your website that most people never see or think about. It's called structured data - and for dental practices, it's one of the most important things to get right.
Structured data (specifically Schema.org markup) is code that explicitly tells AI: this is a dental practice, it's located here, it offers these treatments, it's been operating since this year, here's how to contact them. Without it, AI has to infer all of that from the text on your pages. With it, you've handed AI a clear, unambiguous label.
Most dental websites don't have any. A few have basic business information. Very few have properly implemented dental-specific schema that covers treatments, team members, and service areas.
It's one of the clearest competitive advantages available right now - not because it's complicated, but because so few practices have done it.
The practices that are getting this right
They're not all big multi-site groups with large marketing budgets. Some of the best-positioned dental practices for AI search are single-surgery practices with a strong local reputation and a website that's been properly set up.
What they tend to have in common:
- A clear, specific description of each treatment they offer - written for patients, not regulators
- A genuinely helpful FAQ section that answers the questions patients actually ask before booking
- A Google Business Profile that matches the website exactly - same name, address, phone number, categories, description
- A steady stream of reviews that include specific, useful detail
- Behind-the-scenes structured data that tells AI exactly who they are and what they do
- Content that speaks clearly to the kinds of patients they want to attract
None of that is beyond any practice. It's just not what most website agencies focus on - because most website agencies are still thinking about traditional Google rankings.
What to actually do about it
If you're a dental practice owner reading this, the most useful thing you can do right now is find out where you actually stand.
Our AI Visibility Checker will show you how your practice is currently being understood by AI - not just Google, but ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the rest. It takes a couple of minutes and gives you a clear picture of what's working and what isn't.
Beyond that, the priorities are:
Audit your treatment pages. Does each treatment you offer have its own page? Is the content specific and detailed enough for AI to understand what the treatment involves, who it's for, and what the process looks like?
Check your consistency. Is your practice name, address, and phone number identical on your website, your Google Business Profile, and any directories you're listed on?
Look at your reviews. What proportion of your reviewers say something specific and useful? If most are short, it's worth thinking about how you encourage reviews - and what you ask patients to mention.
Talk to someone about structured data. If you don't know whether your website has dental schema markup, it probably doesn't. This is a gap worth closing.
The good news is that most of your local competitors are in the same position you are right now. The window to build an advantage here is still genuinely open.
It won't stay open forever.