MARKETING

Google just changed the dental marketing game

If you've spent the last decade building a dental marketing playbook around traditional Google search results, brace yourself for what may be some frustrating news. 

What happened: Google unveiled a sweeping reinvention of its search tool last week that will see the familiar list of blue links absorbed into an AI-powered conversational assistant designed to keep users inside Google's ecosystem rather than send them out to other websites. 

• The new system will attempt to provide users with answers to their search queries through Google’s AI tools rather than sending them to relevant third-party websites and allow users to set up “information agents” to do more complex research for them. 

Why it matters: Google is trying to fundamentally change how people gather information online, which will radically reshape your patient acquisition funnel. 

• Google’s existing AI Overviews feature is already tanking search traffic. When it appears at the top of search results, click-through to traditional listings drops by as much as 61%, according to one analysis of more than 25 million impressions.

Zoom out: Google isn't the only player offering AI tools that are redrawing the marketing map. Patients are now turning to chatbots to find healthcare providers as often as review sites or primary care physicians.

• A survey by patient-experience vendor rater8 found that 31% of patients have used ChatGPT or similar AI tools, like Claude and Perplexity, to research providers, and 26% said AI directly influenced who they chose, roughly on par with primary care referrals (28%) and review sites (29%).

What it means for you: When your blog post on "are dental implants worth it?" can now be summarized in two AI-generated sentences, with no click to follow, you should expect search traffic to your website to dry up fast.

• Commodity-level content (think a steady stream of blog posts that could easily be generated by AI) is no longer a useful way to get in front of patients. Reviews, testimonials, before-and-after galleries, and authentically original content with a unique perspective are all things Google says it now prioritizes.

What you can do: You don’t need to throw out your entire online marketing plan and start from scratch. Referral traffic to your website from the search engine results page may be down, but those patients who used to be Googling “dentists near me” still need to find a provider—it’s just how they get to you that is changing. Here are some steps you can take to maximize the likelihood they find you:

• Audit your AI search visibility. Run high-value queries ("best implant dentist in [city]," "Invisalign cost [city]") through AI chatbots and Google’s AI mode. If competitors are showing up and your practices aren't, you have a measurable gap to close. You can use tools like Profound to automate this if you want to invest more.
  

• Track the new channels. Add ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, and other AI chatbots as custom channel groupings in Google Analytics (or whatever analytics software you’re using) and start tracking traffic from these sources.
  

• Have a healthy skepticism of AI-specific hacks. Google has explicitly said tactics like creating llms.txt files, “chunking” content for AI, and rewriting content for AI aren’t helpful in getting more visibility in AI answers. Some skepticism of “GEO” vendors' promises is warranted.
  

• Double down on location-level fundamentals. Each office needs its own complete Google Business Profile, a unique location page, and a steady cadence of new reviews. High-quality images and procedure-specific testimonials are key. These are strong SEO signals that Google has said are still critical.
  

• Prepare for an even shorter funnel. As Google and other AI systems move toward in-search reservations and payments, the click-to-website step may eventually fade for routine bookings. Keep tabs on this and prepare to adjust your tech stack to allow for this sort of in-chat booking when it rolls out.

Bottom line: Digital marketers have had a pretty clear idea about how to rank in Google results for a long time. As AI becomes the dominant way people get information on the internet, some of those tactics will continue to work and some new ones will be needed. The marketers who succeed will be those nimble enough to experiment and find out for themselves what a winning playbook in the AI search era looks like.