How to Get Your Practice Recommended by ChatGPT

A urologist we work with tried something on a slow afternoon. He opened ChatGPT and typed "who is a good urologist near me" with his city. The AI thought for a second and came back with three practices, a sentence about each, and a link. His was not one of them. Two of the three were newer offices with a fraction of his experience. He called us that evening with a very reasonable question: how did a computer decide those two mattered and I did not?

That question is going to land on every practice owner sooner than they think. So let us answer it properly. First, what is actually happening when someone asks an AI for a doctor. Then why your Bing listing runs the show behind the scenes. Then the exact steps to get your name into those answers.

Patients are already asking AI, not just Google

This is not a someday thing. OpenAI reported in 2025 that ChatGPT had passed 800 million weekly users, making it one of the fastest growing consumer products ever built. A meaningful and growing slice of those people use it the way they used to use a search bar: to make a decision. "Find me a pediatric dentist that takes my insurance." "What is a good men's health clinic near me for testosterone." "Which dermatologist in town has the best reviews for acne."

And it is not only ChatGPT. Google now puts an AI Overview at the top of many searches, answering the question before the list of links even appears. Gemini, Perplexity, and the AI built into phones are all doing versions of the same thing. The shared thread is this: instead of handing the patient ten links to sort through, the AI hands them a short answer with a few names. The choosing that patients used to do, the AI now does for them.

That changes the game in one blunt way. On Google you could be the seventh link and still get found. In an AI answer there is no seventh link. There are two or three names, and everyone else does not exist. The room got a lot smaller, and the practices that understand that early get in before it fills up.

The part almost nobody knows: ChatGPT runs on Bing

Here is the detail that makes the urologist's story make sense. When ChatGPT searches the web to answer a "near me" question, it does not have its own map of every local business. It leans on Microsoft's search index. ChatGPT's search feature is powered by Bing, the product of Microsoft's deep partnership with OpenAI. So when a patient asks ChatGPT for a doctor, the AI is, in effect, running a Bing search and summarizing what comes back.

Now here is the problem for most practices. You have probably spent real effort on your Google Business Profile. Photos, hours, categories, replies to reviews, the works. And you have almost certainly never touched Bing Places for Business, the free equivalent on Microsoft's side. We ask this in nearly every strategy call, and the answer is almost always the same blank look. So the exact information the fastest growing AI assistant relies on is often missing, stale, or flat wrong for the very practices that did everything right on Google.

Claiming your Bing Places listing takes about ten minutes and costs nothing. If you have a Google Business Profile, Bing can often import it in a few clicks. That one chore puts accurate information about your practice directly into the pipe that feeds ChatGPT. It will not make you win on its own, but skipping it is like leaving the front door of that whole channel locked.

How an AI actually decides who to name

People imagine the AI has an opinion. It does not. It reads what the web says about the practices near a location and summarizes the ones that look most relevant and most trusted. Strip away the mystery and the signals it leans on are familiar, because they are the same ones that build trust with a human:

• Consistent, complete listings. Your name, address, and phone number matching everywhere, on Google, Bing, your website, and the directories. When the facts about you disagree across the web, the AI gets less confident and leaves you out.
• Reviews, and lots of recent ones. Volume, rating, and freshness all read as proof that real people trust you. An AI asked for a "good" doctor is going to lean toward the practices the web clearly says are good.
• A clear, fast website with real pages. One clean page per service and per location, written in plain language, gives the AI something specific to pull from. A slow, vague, single page site gives it almost nothing.
• Plain, factual answers. Content that answers the actual questions patients ask, what a treatment costs, whether it hurts, what insurance you take, is exactly what gets quoted back in an AI answer.

Notice what is not on that list: clever slogans, keyword stuffing, or a pretty homepage video. AI models favor sources that are easy to read and hard to misread. The practices getting named are usually the ones that made their information clean, consistent, and genuinely useful, not the ones that shouted the loudest.

The steps to become one of the names

This new field has a name, generative engine optimization, or answer engine optimization if you prefer. The jargon is new, the fundamentals are not. Here is the practical order we walk practices through.

1. Claim Bing Places, not just Google. Do it today. Import from Google if you can, then check every field. This is the single highest leverage ten minutes for AI search, and it is the step almost no competitor near you has taken.

2. Make your name, address, and phone identical everywhere. Pick one exact format and use it on Google, Bing, your site, and any directory you are listed in. Inconsistency is one of the most overlooked reasons a practice gets skipped, by both maps and AI. If your directory listings are a mess, our guide on fixing your insurance directory listing is a good place to start.

3. Build a steady flow of real reviews. Not a burst, a habit. Ask every happy patient while the good feeling is fresh. Reviews are one of the loudest trust signals a machine can read, and they compound. Our piece on how to get more Google reviews lays out a simple system.

4. Give each service and location its own clear page. A page that plainly explains one thing, in the words patients actually use, is easy for an AI to quote. A fast site helps here too, because slow pages get crawled and trusted less. If yours drags, see why a slow website costs you patients.

5. Add a real FAQ that answers real questions. Write out the questions patients ask at the front desk and answer them in plain sentences. This is the exact format AI chats love to lift, and it helps human visitors too.

6. Be present and consistent across the web. A healthy Google and Bing profile, real reviews, and a clear site all telling the same story is what makes an AI confident enough to say your name. Confidence is the whole game.

Our honest take

Here is where we plant a flag. Do not panic and do not overspend chasing the shiny new AI thing, but do not ignore it either. The truth in the middle is that AI search is not some separate discipline you have to learn from scratch. It rewards the same foundation that has always won local healthcare: accurate listings, real reviews, a fast clear website, and a consistent story about who you are. If you have neglected those, an AI chat is simply the newest place that neglect shows up, and now it shows up as being left out of the answer entirely.

So the practices that already did the boring trust work are getting recommended by ChatGPT right now, often without realizing why. The ones that skipped it are invisible in a channel that adds users by the millions every month. The good news is that the fix is not exotic. It is the fundamentals, done properly, plus the ten minute Bing step almost nobody has taken. Start there and you are ahead of most of your town.

How EtherealMinds gets your practice into the answer

When we run patient acquisition for a practice, getting found by both people and AI is baked in, not bolted on. We claim and clean up your Google and Bing profiles, make your information identical across the web, and build the steady review flow that tells every search, human or machine, that you are the trusted choice. We build websites that load fast and convert, with clear service and location pages and real FAQ content that AI chats can actually quote back to a searching patient.

And because a recommendation is only worth something if the patient can act on it, our AI receptionist answers the call or message the second that patient reaches out, day or night, and books them before they drift back to the chat and pick the next name. It all runs on one connected system, so the path from an AI answer to a booked appointment is built, not left to luck.

So, how do you get your practice recommended by ChatGPT? Feed it clean, consistent, trustworthy information about a practice patients clearly love, starting with the Bing listing you have probably never claimed. Do that, and you stop hoping the AI finds you and start being the answer it gives.