Patients ask AI.
Is your practice in it?

The best Australian data comes from a national survey in the Medical Journal of Australia. Among people who used ChatGPT for health questions, the most common were about a condition (48%), what symptoms meant (37%) and what action to take (36%). Trust in the answers was only moderate.

Dental questions fit that pattern: 'is a chipped tooth an emergency', 'how much is a root canal in Sydney', 'implant or bridge', 'does my health fund cover wisdom teeth'. Each one fans out. Google's name for it is query fan-out: the AI runs related searches at once, then writes one answer with links to the pages behind it.

Moderate trust is good news for a practice. People click through to check, and the page they land on can be yours.

Google's search quality raters treat health as 'Your Money or Your Life' content, where a bad page can hurt someone. Rater scores don't rank pages directly, but they guide how Google tunes its systems, and health content is almost always treated as YMYL.

The AI side has had its stumbles. In January 2026 Google removed AI Overviews for some liver test searches after the Guardian reported summaries that could mislead people about their results. Google said many flagged answers were accurate and backed by good sources. Either way, health answers are under scrutiny, and they need sources they can stand behind.

For a practice, careful wins. Pages that explain options, cost drivers and risks in plain words, written or reviewed by a named dentist and dated, are the kind of source an answer about teeth can safely link to.

Ahpra's guidelines cover all verbal, printed and electronic communication that promotes a regulated health service, which includes your website. Whoever authorises the content is responsible for it, even when a marketing agency or an AI tool wrote the words.

That matters more once AI is reading your pages. A line like 'pain-free implants' or 'the Central Coast's best cosmetic dentist' may turn up in an answer, and it was a risky claim to begin with. Testimonials about symptoms, treatment or outcomes can't be used either, so a page quoting 'my new veneers changed my life' is a problem whoever reads it.

Specialist wording is the other trap. Only registered specialists can present as one, and there are 13 recognised dental specialties. The dental advertising rules page has a checker for title wording.

Pick a treatment, then tick what your page answers today. It shows the follow-up questions you're missing, and the ones that should stay general.

The riskiest dental questions people put to AI are about urgency: 'is a swollen face from a tooth an emergency', 'can a knocked-out tooth be saved'. A practice page shouldn't try to triage strangers. It should say how to reach you today, what your after-hours arrangement is, and where to find official help.

Public health services already publish that guidance. NSW Health's Illawarra Shoalhaven dental service, for example, lists injury to the teeth, uncontrolled bleeding in the mouth and facial swelling from a tooth infection as dental emergencies, and says to go to a hospital emergency department after hours. Pointing to your local public health guidance, and to 000 in an emergency, is safer than writing your own rules.

Then make the practical facts unmissable: the phone number as a tap-to-call link, real hours on your Google Business Profile, and whether you keep same-day emergency appointments. That's what an answer to 'emergency dentist Charlestown open now' needs from you.

None of this needs special code. Google says there's no need for llms.txt files, special schema or content cut into chunks for AI, and that a Business Profile can help a business appear in AI responses. Let AI search crawlers in as well: OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot are left out of ChatGPT search answers.

• One page per treatment you actually provide, with what's involved, the number of visits, what changes the cost and the alternatives.
• Fees by item where you can, with what changes them. The dental prices page covers the ACCC and Ahpra rules on showing them.
• Which health funds you can claim through on the spot, worded so it doesn't promise a rebate the patient's policy won't pay.
• A named dentist who wrote or reviewed each treatment page, with a 'last reviewed' date.
• The same name, address, phone and hours on your site, Google Business Profile and directories.