There's no setting, file or fee that puts your practice into ChatGPT's answers. What you control is whether the assistant can read your site, whether your pages state the facts patients ask about, and whether other sources say the same thing. That covers most of it.
This guide explains where ChatGPT and the other assistants get their information, then walks through six steps a practice can take. None of them guarantees a mention. All of them remove reasons you're being left out.
Leak 1 of 7: not being found. An assistant that can't read or trust your pages leaves you out of the answer, the first of the seven leaks between a first search and a returning patient.
Where does ChatGPT get its information?
From two places. It answers from what it learned in training, and for many questions it searches the web while it answers and cites the pages it used. Training data goes stale, so questions about current, local things, such as which practices near you offer a service, are where live search matters most.
OpenAI runs a separate crawler for each job (OpenAI crawler documentation):
- OAI-SearchBot finds pages for ChatGPT's search features. OpenAI says sites that opt out of it won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as plain navigational links.
- GPTBot collects content that may be used to train OpenAI's models. Blocking it tells OpenAI not to train on your content.
- ChatGPT-User visits a page when a person's request calls for it. Because a person started it, robots.txt rules may not apply.
The other assistants draw on their own sources. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode use pages that are indexed and eligible to show a snippet in Google Search (Google Search Central). Microsoft reports the pages cited in Copilot and Bing's AI answers in Bing Webmaster Tools.
Step 1: Let the assistants read your site
Open yourpractice.com/robots.txt and check it doesn't block OAI-SearchBot, Googlebot or Bingbot. Blocking GPTBot is a separate decision about training, and it doesn't take you out of ChatGPT search.
Check your hosting and security settings too. A bot-blocking rule can shut crawlers out even when robots.txt lets them in. OpenAI says a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to reach its search systems.
Then check the facts are in the page itself. A fee inside a photo of a price list, hours in a PDF, or services shown only inside a booking widget that loads after the page can all be missed. If you can't select the text with your mouse, assume an assistant can't quote it.
Step 2: Put the facts that decide a booking in plain text
When someone asks an assistant for a practice, the useful answer names who treats what, where, for how much. Make each of these a sentence on your site:
- What you treat and who you see. Conditions, age groups, and anything you don't offer.
- What it costs. A fee, a starting price or a range, and whether you're private-pay or out of network.
- Insurance. Whether you take it, and whether you provide superbills.
- Where you are. Address, neighborhoods you serve, and which states you see telehealth patients in.
- Who the clinicians are. Names, credentials and what each one focuses on.
- How to book. Hours, how soon you can see someone, and the booking link.
You don't need special code for this. Google says there's no special schema.org markup needed for its AI features. Accurate markup that matches what the page says is still good practice for search in general.
Step 3: One clear page for each thing patients ask about
A practice with one homepage and a list of services gives an assistant little to cite. Give each main service or condition its own page, and open it with a direct answer: what it is, who it's for, what it costs, and how to book.
Don't chop pages into fragments for AI. Google's guidance on generative AI features says there's no need to break content into tiny pieces, because its systems can find the relevant part of a longer page.
Keep health claims supportable. A page written to be quoted is still advertising, and the rules in our healthcare advertising guide apply to it.
Step 4: Make every profile say the same thing
Assistants compare sources. If your website, your Google Business Profile and your directory listings disagree on your address, fees or insurance, the answer has to pick one, and it may pick the old one.
- Update your Google Business Profile: categories, services, hours and booking link.
- Fix directory listings, including specialty directories such as Psychology Today, and the insurer directories you still appear in.
- Close or merge listings for clinicians who have left and addresses you've moved from.
Our medical practice SEO page covers the local side of this in more detail.
Step 5: Earn mentions, don't plant them
Assistants lean on what other sites say about you: reviews, professional associations, local press, podcasts and guest articles. Those mentions are worth earning.
Planted ones aren't. Google's guidance warns that seeking inauthentic "mentions" across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem. Paying for a spot on a "best doctors in [city]" list, or seeding forum posts that praise your practice, is the kind of thing it means, and a board may see it as misleading advertising.
Reviews count as mentions too. Ask for them the same way every time and within your board's rules, as set out in our guide to Google reviews for doctors.
Step 6: Check what the assistants say about you
Ask ChatGPT, Google's AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot the questions your patients ask, in your city, and write down who gets named, what's said and which pages are cited. Do it more than once, because the same question can get a different answer later.
Two free reports help. Google's Search Console added generative AI performance reports in June 2026, showing impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Bing Webmaster Tools shows how often Copilot and Bing's AI answers cite your pages.
Our AI visibility audit turns this into a one-hour checklist.
What doesn't work
- Relying on an llms.txt file. Google says llms.txt files neither help nor harm visibility in Google Search. Having one is harmless; expecting it to change the answers isn't realistic.
- Buying guaranteed placement. Nobody controls how the assistants choose. A guarantee is a sign the seller doesn't understand the product, or hopes you don't.
- Mass-producing AI-written pages. Thin pages don't give an assistant anything worth citing, and every health claim on them still needs evidence.
Fill The Lobby runs these six steps for practices as AI visibility, with a monthly record of what the assistants say. If you want to know how much this matters yet, our guide to ChatGPT vs Google for finding a doctor covers the research.
Sources
- OpenAI — Overview of OpenAI crawlers, checked 24 September 2026
- Google Search Central — AI features and your website (updated 10 December 2025), checked 24 September 2026
- Google Search Central — Optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search (updated 10 July 2026), checked 24 September 2026
- Google Search Central Blog — Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (June 2026), checked 24 September 2026
- Bing Webmaster Blog — AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (10 February 2026), checked 24 September 2026