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You rank in ChatGPT by letting ChatGPT search reach your site, publishing the clearest sourced answer to each question patients ask, and keeping your practice facts the same on every page and listing ChatGPT reads. Curve Compliance helps healthcare brands see where they stand in those answers and improve it. AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. The managed service is Curve AEO, with a team that handles the strategy and the work for you.
Want to see which practices ChatGPT names for your patients' questions, and whether yours is one of them? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.
What ranking in ChatGPT means
ChatGPT doesn't hand a patient a page of ten links. It writes an answer, and that answer either names your practice or it doesn't. When ChatGPT searches the web, the answer can also cite pages as sources. OpenAI says "ChatGPT ranks search results using multiple factors intended to help users find relevant, reliable information," and it says placement is not assured (OpenAI Help Center). So ranking in ChatGPT comes down to two results you can check: named in the answer, and cited as a source.
Not every answer uses search. In Semrush's US clickstream study, ChatGPT ran a web search on 34.5% of queries as of February 2026, down from 46% near the start of its 17-month study (Semrush). Answers that search can cite a page you published last month. Answers without search draw on what the model already learned, which is why the same facts about your practice need to appear consistently across the web, not on one page alone.
Why ChatGPT matters for healthcare
Health is a big part of what people ask ChatGPT. OpenAI said in July 2026 that more than 300 million people turn to ChatGPT with health-related questions every week (OpenAI), and its January 2026 report says "More than 5% of all ChatGPT messages globally are about healthcare" (OpenAI, AI as a Healthcare Ally).
Those questions now shape which provider a patient picks. In rater8's 2026 survey, 47% of patients said they had used an AI tool to research healthcare providers, up from 31% in 2025. Among patients who searched for a new doctor in the past year, 36% said AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude influenced the decision, ahead of Google search results at 34% and doctor referrals at 32% (rater8, 2026 Patient Choice Report). In rater8's 2025 survey, 73% of patients who had used generative AI to research providers picked ChatGPT among the tools they found most helpful or accurate (rater8, 2025 report).
The clicks are few but concentrated. Conductor found ChatGPT drives 83.8% of all AI referral traffic in the health care industry, while AI referrals are 0.64% of all health care website traffic (Conductor). Much of the decision can happen inside the answer, before anyone clicks, so referral visits alone undercount ChatGPT.
| Figure | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| More than 300 million | People a week who bring ChatGPT health-related questions (July 2026) | OpenAI |
| 66% | Patients using AI for provider research who have seen incorrect provider information from it | rater8 |
| 83.8% | Share of health care AI referral traffic that comes from ChatGPT (May to September 2025) | Conductor |
How ChatGPT finds the pages it cites
OpenAI's help center describes the steps. When ChatGPT search works with outside search providers, it "typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries that it sends those providers." It can use an approximate location from the user's IP address, and OpenAI's own example turns "What are some good restaurants near me?" into the search "top restaurants San Francisco." It may also share location with "trusted third-party providers that help provide more local information, such as nearby business listings" (OpenAI Help Center). For a practice, a patient's "pediatric dentist near me" can become a search for pediatric dentists in their town, and the results can include practice pages and nearby business listings.
Eligibility comes first. OpenAI says to "allow OAI-Searchbot to crawl the site and confirm that the website host or content delivery network allows traffic from OpenAI's published searchbot IP addresses" (OpenAI Help Center). Sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links," and GPTBot, the crawler for model training, is a separate setting (OpenAI crawlers).
ChatGPT doesn't simply repeat Google, either. In Ahrefs' study of 15,000 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity, only 12% of cited links ranked in Google's top 10 for the same prompt on average; Perplexity was highest at 28.6%, and the others hovered around 8%. 80% of AI assistant citations didn't rank anywhere in Google for the original query (Ahrefs). Good SEO helps, but it isn't the whole job. For what each assistant says about its sources, see where AI gets healthcare answers.
What the research links to being named and cited
No one outside OpenAI knows the full ranking recipe. These studies are the best public evidence of what tends to go with being named and cited. They are correlations or controlled tests, not a formula.
| Signal | What the study found | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Brand mentions | Across 75,000 brands, YouTube mentions had the strongest correlation with AI visibility (about 0.737) in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews, and branded web mentions ran 0.66 to 0.71. The number of pages on a site showed almost no relationship (about 0.194). | Ahrefs, December 2025 |
| Listings | For local healthcare questions, 52.61% of AI citations pointed to third-party listings such as medical directories and insurance platforms. | Yext, October 2025 |
| Freshness | Pages AI assistants cite are 25.7% fresher on average than pages in Google's organic results. | Ahrefs, July 2025 |
| Evidence on the page | Adding citations, quotations and statistics improved a source's visibility in AI-generated answers by 30% to 40% on the researchers' benchmark, and by up to 37% in a test on Perplexity; keyword stuffing gave little to no improvement. | GEO study (KDD) |
| Selectivity | Across more than 350,000 locations of multi-location brands in all industries, ChatGPT recommended just 1.2% of brand locations, against a 35.9% appearance rate in Google's local 3-Pack. | SOCi, January 2026 |
Across these studies, being named and cited tends to go with brands the web already talks about, listings that confirm the basics, and pages that answer with evidence. ChatGPT recommends a small share of brand locations (SOCi), so "pretty good" is not enough. For why a competitor often gets named instead, see why AI recommends your competitor.
An eight-step plan to rank in ChatGPT
- Let ChatGPT search in. Check that robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot and that your host, CDN or firewall doesn't block OpenAI's published IP ranges. OpenAI says a robots.txt change can take about 24 hours to register (OpenAI crawlers). Decide on GPTBot separately; it covers training, not search.
- List the questions patients really ask. Start with what your front desk hears every week: "best physical therapist for runners in Austin," "does this clinic take Aetna." Group them by service and location so each has an obvious home on your site.
- Answer first, then back it up. Open each page with a plain two-sentence answer, then the detail. Cite sources, quote your clinicians and add real figures where they help; those were the top methods in the GEO study (GEO study). Clinicians review and approve anything medical before it goes live.
- State your facts in plain text. Services, locations, hours, insurance accepted, provider names and credentials belong in crawlable HTML, not only in images or PDFs. In rater8's survey, 66% of patients who used AI for provider research had seen incorrect provider information from it, and 60% trusted the summary without checking (rater8). See how to fix wrong AI answers about your practice.
- Keep every listing consistent. Use the same name, address, phone, hours and services on your Google Business Profile, directories and insurer pages. Listings carried 52.61% of AI citations for local healthcare questions in Yext's study (Yext).
- Earn real mentions. Clinician videos, local news, professional associations and community partners put your name where AI assistants read, and YouTube and branded web mentions led Ahrefs' correlations (Ahrefs). Skip paid or fake ones: Google says seeking inauthentic mentions "isn't as helpful as it might seem" (Google).
- Keep pages current. Review your key service pages on a schedule and update them when facts change. AI assistants favored fresher pages in Ahrefs' study (Ahrefs).
- Measure over days, not once. Ask the same questions on several days, with the city in the question, and record whether you were named and whether you were cited. Ahrefs found 50% to 83% of citations were gone the next day, though about 75% of those came back within 20 days (Ahrefs).
Healthcare rules that still apply
Two habits keep this work safe. Clinicians approve anything medical, and your team tests ChatGPT with marketing questions only, never anything that includes a patient's details. Patients are wary too: KFF found 77% of the public is concerned about the privacy of personal medical information provided to AI tools (KFF).
Trust in the answers is thin. West Health-Gallup found only 4% of recent AI health users strongly trust the accuracy of AI-generated health information (West Health-Gallup). Pages with named clinicians, clear sourcing and current facts give patients and AI assistants something solid to rely on. For how patients use these answers, see how patients use ChatGPT to find a doctor.
What to skip
- Keyword stuffing. It gave "little to no improvement" in the GEO tests (GEO study).
- A page for every phrasing. Google says creating separate content for every variation of how people search, primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses, violates its scaled content abuse spam policy (Google). One strong page per topic beats fifty thin ones.
How Curve Compliance helps
AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. In Curve, the feature is called AI Visibility (AEO), and the managed service is Curve AEO. Introducing Curve AEO: a service that helps you understand how your brand appears in AI search, with a team that handles the strategy and execution for you.
What You Get with Curve AEO:
- AI Visibility Tracking. See how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers.
- Optimize Your Site for AI. We make technical improvements that help AI assistants find, read, and understand your content.
- Competitive Insights. Understand who's getting recommended instead of you.
- Content Roadmap. Identify gaps and prioritize opportunities to improve performance.
With the managed service, Curve's team sets up your questions, competitors and topics, writes the pages on your roadmap, and makes the technical fixes that help AI assistants read your site. Your clinicians review and approve anything medical before it goes live. If your developer manages your site, Curve's team hands them the exact fixes. Curve's team turns those insights into action: building your strategy, creating and optimizing content, and tracking progress.
In one AI Visibility program we've run, for a HIPAA-focused healthcare software brand, AI assistants named or cited the brand in more than half of their answers to its 40 core buyer questions about five weeks in. Across 184 buyer questions, its site was cited in more AI answers than any competitor's, more than 2.5 times as many as the nearest one.
It ties AI answers to the visits and bookings they bring you. It's built for healthcare: only the marketing question you track is sent to AI assistants, screened for PHI first, and never anything about a patient. Curve is SOC 2 Type II and signs a BAA on every plan.
Built for healthcare marketers, Curve connects the entire patient funnel in one platform: paid ads, web analytics, and now AI search. See AI Visibility for the feature.
Sources (checked November 6, 2026): OpenAI Help Center, Searching the web with ChatGPT; OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers; OpenAI, Launching Health in ChatGPT (July 2026); OpenAI, AI as a Healthcare Ally (January 2026); rater8, 2026 Patient Choice Report (June 3, 2026); rater8, The Next Evolution of Patient Choice (2025 report); Conductor, Health Care Industry: 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks; Semrush, ChatGPT traffic analysis (updated April 7, 2026); Ahrefs, Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google's Top 10 (August 11, 2025); Ahrefs, Top Brand Visibility Factors in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews (December 12, 2025); Ahrefs, AI Assistants Prefer to Cite Fresher Content (July 28, 2025); Ahrefs, How Stable Are AI Citations? (October 29, 2026); Yext Research, AI Citations, User Locations, and Query Context (October 9, 2025); SOCi, 2026 Local Visibility Index (January 28, 2026); Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2024); KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust (March 25, 2026); West Health-Gallup, Americans Turning to AI to Supplement Healthcare Visits (April 14, 2026); Google Search Central, Optimizing for generative AI features.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you rank in ChatGPT?
You rank in ChatGPT by letting OAI-SearchBot crawl your site, publishing clear, sourced answers to the questions patients ask, and keeping your practice facts consistent across your site and listings. OpenAI says placement is not assured, so the work is making your practice the easiest one to name and cite.
How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my practice?
Make the case on your own pages and across the web: a clear page for each service and location, plain facts on insurance and hours, consistent listings, and real mentions in local news and professional sites. In SOCi's study of multi-location brands across industries, ChatGPT recommended just 1.2% of brand locations, so specifics matter (SOCi).
How do I show up in ChatGPT search results?
Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and make sure your host or CDN allows OpenAI's published IP ranges, which is what OpenAI asks for (OpenAI Help Center). After that, OpenAI says ChatGPT ranks results using multiple factors intended to help users find relevant, reliable information.
Does ChatGPT use Google's rankings?
Not in a simple way. In Ahrefs' study of 15,000 prompts across four AI assistants, only 12% of cited links ranked in Google's top 10 for the same prompt on average; Perplexity was highest at 28.6%, and ChatGPT and the others hovered around 8% (Ahrefs), and OpenAI says ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers.
Does blocking GPTBot keep my practice out of ChatGPT?
Not out of ChatGPT search. Disallowing GPTBot tells OpenAI your content should not be used to train its models, while sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. OpenAI says each setting is independent (OpenAI).
Is it safe to test ChatGPT with my patients' questions?
Yes, if you test the marketing question only, such as "best pediatric dentist in Denver," and never type anything about a real patient. Clinicians should still approve any medical content you publish in response.
Is AI Visibility a Curve feature or a managed service?
Both. AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. In Curve, the feature is called AI Visibility (AEO), and the managed service is Curve AEO.
Talk to Curve Compliance
Want to know where your practice stands in ChatGPT today, and what to fix first? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.