When patients
ask AI first.

The best Australian figure I've found comes from a University of Sydney team writing in the Medical Journal of Australia. Of 2,034 adults surveyed in June 2024, 9.9% had used ChatGPT for health information in the previous six months, which the authors put at about 1.9 million people. Of those who knew about ChatGPT but hadn't used it for health, 38.8% said they'd consider it within six months.

Use was higher among adults aged 18 to 44, people in capital cities, people born in non-English-speaking countries and people who speak another language at home. For a clinic in Parramatta, Hurstville or Box Hill with a multilingual patient base, that's not a side issue.

Worldwide, OpenAI says more than 230 million people ask ChatGPT health questions every week, and it launched a separate ChatGPT Health space in January 2026. That's OpenAI's own figure, not an independent count.

Look at that list. People mostly use AI to understand, before they choose. In the same study, 61% of users asked at least one higher-risk question, the kind that would usually need clinical advice, and their trust in the answers was middling: 3.1 out of 5.

So the person who rings your front desk may already have a theory about their knee, a handful of new terms and a view on whether they need a physio, a chiro or a GP. The marketing job isn't to argue with that. It's to be the source the answer drew on, and the clinic that sounds careful when they arrive.

The questions that lead to a booking are usually the second and third ones: 'who treats this near me', 'do I need a referral', 'is it covered by Medicare or my fund'. A clinic can answer those better than any general health site, because only the clinic knows its own fees, hours and practitioners.

None of these companies publish how they pick which clinic to name. This is what each one says about where its answers come from, checked on 2 November 2026.

• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: answers are grounded in pages Google's ranking systems pull from the Search index, and the AI runs several related searches at once, which Google calls query fan-out. Google says Business Profiles can help a business appear in AI responses.
• ChatGPT: when it searches, it sometimes partners with other search providers, and may use third-party providers for local information. On phones it can show a map. OpenAI says ChatGPT Health is designed to support, not replace, medical care.
• Gemini: you can ask it about places in plain language and it can still answer place questions using Google Maps, so your Google Business Profile does double duty.

Google does take health answers down. In January 2026, after a Guardian investigation, AI Overviews disappeared for some liver blood test searches. Google said it doesn't comment on individual removals. Expect AI answers on test results, medicines and symptoms to come and go.

For a clinic that's a reason to write more carefully, not less. Google's guide to helpful content asks who made a page, how and why. On a health page, 'who' is a named practitioner with their profession and registration, and 'how' is that they wrote or checked it.

A condition page that promotes your service is still advertising, so the Ahpra advertising rules apply: no promises about outcomes, no testimonials. If the page couldn't be read out at a case conference without someone wincing, rewrite it.

The Ahpra register is the public record of who is allowed to practise, their type of registration and any conditions. Ahpra also warns that a practitioner's registered name may differ from the name they go by. 'Samantha Nguyen' on the register, 'Dr Sam Nguyen' on your site and 'Sam N. Physio' on a booking directory are three things a patient, or an AI tool, has to join up.

Titles matter too. The National Law doesn't ban 'Dr' for non-medical practitioners, but Ahpra's example is Dr McKenzie (chiropractor): the profession has to be clear. And 'specialist', 'specialises in' and similar words imply specialist registration, so 'our sports injury specialist' on a general physio's page is likely to mislead, whether a person reads it or an AI repeats it.

Not every allied health profession is on the register. Ahpra covers 16 professions, including physiotherapy, psychology, chiropractic, osteopathy, podiatry and occupational therapy. Dietitians, exercise physiologists and speech pathologists aren't among them, so don't describe them as Ahpra registered. Name their professional association instead. In NSW they must follow the Code of Conduct for unregistered health practitioners, which the Health Care Complaints Commission enforces and which bans misleading claims.

Fill in one practitioner at a time. The check compares their names, flags title wording and writes a fact line you can reuse on the website, the Google profile and booking directories.

Open ChatGPT and Google in a private window and ask the way a patient would: 'physio for runner's knee in Wollongong', 'psychologist in Newcastle who sees teenagers', 'do I need a referral to see a podiatrist'. Note who gets named, what's said about them and which sources are cited.

Answers shift from one ask to the next, so repeat it a few times over a fortnight and look for the pattern. If the same directory keeps being cited, make sure your listing there is complete. Google is also rolling out Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, worth a look once a month. If you'd rather not write the questions yourself, the AI visibility check does it for you.