Here's a two-minute exercise that tells you more about your marketing than most paid audits: open ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews and ask, "Who's the best chiropractor in [your city]?"
Then ask the follow-ups a real patient would: "Who should I see for sciatica near [your neighborhood]?" — "Is [your practice name] any good?"
Three outcomes are possible, and each one is a diagnosis.
Outcome one: you're not mentioned at all
In our experience this is the most common result, and it stings — but the mechanism matters more than the sting. AI assistants don't keep a secret list of practices they like. When someone asks for a recommendation, the system pulls from live local data and from what the web consistently says about each practice: business profiles, review depth, structured data, content it can actually parse.
If you're absent, the machine couldn't assemble enough consistent evidence about you to risk naming you. Somewhere, your signals are thin — a Google Business Profile running at half its potential, reviews that stalled two years ago, or directory data that contradicts itself about your address and phone number.
Absence isn't bad luck. It's a readable symptom.
Outcome two: you're mentioned, but described wrong
Sometimes the AI names your practice and then fumbles the details — an old address, a service you don't offer, a doctor who left three years ago. This is worse than it looks: the patient doesn't know the AI is wrong. They just know the practice "seems off," or they show up expecting something you don't do.
Wrong descriptions almost always trace to conflicting data you never cleaned up. AI systems synthesize everything the web says about you — including the stale directory listing from your old suite, the abandoned social profile, the insurance page with your former associate. When the sources disagree, the machine guesses. Making every source agree is how you take the pen back.
Outcome three: you're mentioned, accurately
If the AI names you, gets your services right, and cites your review strength — congratulations, you're ahead of nearly every competitor in your market. The question becomes defense: the signals that earned the mention need to keep flowing. Review recency decays. Content ages. A competitor who does the structured-content work can displace you in an answer that only has room for two or three names.
Why this test matters more every month
Patients are quietly moving the "which provider" question from the search bar to the chat box. The answers they get name one to three practices — not ten blue links with room for everyone on page one. Fewer slots, higher stakes.
And here's the part we find genuinely encouraging: the work that wins those slots isn't exotic. It's local SEO done to a higher standard — a complete and active profile, real review velocity, consistent entity data, and content structured so a machine can quote it without guessing. That's what GEO — generative engine optimization — actually is. Not a trick. A standard.
We wrote a full breakdown of how AI systems choose which practices to recommend, including what we build to influence it.
Run the test, keep the receipts
Ask the three questions at the top of this post. Screenshot what comes back. That's your baseline — and whatever it shows, it's fixable with work you can inspect: profile, reviews, citations, content.
If you'd rather have us read the results with you, book a growth call. We'll look at what AI currently says about your practice, trace each miss back to its cause, and tell you honestly what's worth fixing first — and what isn't.