ADS has been in healthcare for 49 years. Since 1977 we’ve watched this industry move from paper claims to clearinghouses, from filing cabinets to the cloud, from the Yellow Pages to Google. That vantage point teaches you the difference between a passing fad and a real shift, so pay attention when we say this: the way patients find a practice is changing faster right now than almost anything we’ve seen in five decades.
A decade ago, getting found came down to one thing: rank high on Google, and the patients came. But technology has moved faster than anyone expected and changed all of that in an instant. The practices that don’t adapt are quietly disappearing from the only place a growing share of patients now look. This isn’t a problem for someday. It’s happening now, across every specialty, and the time to act is while the position is still open.
Here’s what changed. Patients have stopped typing keywords into a search bar and scrolling a page of ten blue links. Increasingly, they open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity and simply ask, “who’s a good dermatologist near me?” or “I think I need to see a cardiologist, where should I go?” And the answer they get back isn’t a page to browse. It’s a short list of one to three names. There is no page two.
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ChatGPT alone now handles roughly 40 million health-related queries in the U.S. every day, and about 1 in 4 of its users asks a health question every week. |
Most of those conversations happen outside office hours, when a worried person is making a decision about their care, and choosing a provider, with no front desk to call. If your practice isn’t named in that moment, the patient doesn’t reject you. They simply never learn you exist.
SEO is still necessary, but it’s no longer sufficient. Getting found in 2026 means competing on three fronts at once:
| SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Ranking in traditional Google and Bing results. The old game, still in play. |
| AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization. Becoming the answer in Google’s AI Overviews, voice search, and featured snippets, where there’s room for one response, not ten. |
| GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. Being the practice that ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity actually name and recommend when a patient asks for help. |
Most marketing agencies are still only playing the first game. The practices pulling ahead are being built to win all three, and because authority compounds, the gap widens every single month a competitor is in and you’re out.
It isn’t luck, and it isn’t a secret trick. AI engines surface the practices whose online presence demonstrates real, verifiable expertise, what Google calls E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). A thin five-page website with a bio and a contact form gives these systems nothing to trust or cite. A practice with deep, well-structured, regularly updated, genuinely useful content becomes the source the AI leans on, in its rankings and in its recommendations.
In other words, the work that earns you traditional Google rankings is increasingly the same work that gets you named by the AI. Depth and authority are the currency of both.
Authority can’t be switched on like a paid ad. It accumulates, which means a practice that starts today is months ahead of one that starts in the fall, and once that authority is built, it’s hard for a competitor to displace. Right now, in most markets and most specialties, the top position is still open. The practices claiming it are the ones who moved before their competitors understood the shift was even happening. Wait, and you’re not standing still. You’re falling behind someone who didn’t.
You don’t have to guess. Health Marketing Group is offering a free analysis of your digital presence: your website, your search visibility, your local presence, and whether you’re showing up (or being skipped) in AI results. No contract, no obligation, no sales pitch. Just an honest picture of your biggest opportunities, and whether there’s real money being left on the table.
Health Marketing Group is an independent partner agency; ADS does not provide marketing services directly. Statistics on AI health-query volume are reported by OpenAI (via Fierce Healthcare, Jan 2026, and iatroX, Apr 2026); agency performance figures are as reported by Health Marketing Group. Results vary by practice, market, and competitive conditions.