Chris (00:03.405)
If you looked at your Google Analytics in January of 2024 and you look at it today something weird has probably happened your impressions Which are how many people go to your website might actually be up, but your clicks are down Your traffic is down Your calls are flat or down and you’re sitting there going wait More people are seeing me but fewer people are coming in what’s going on here? Yeah
Welcome to AI search. Here’s what’s happening. Google is answering your patients’ question before they ever click on your website. They type in what causes bleeding gums and Google writes them a little paragraph at the top of the page. Nonetheless, the patient reads it, question answered, window closed, no click, no call, no appointment. This is called zero click search and it’s eating dental marketing alive, but not the way most people think.
Today, I’m going to tell you exactly what’s getting eaten, what isn’t, and what you should do about it. Welcome back. I’m Chris Pistorius. I run Kickstart Dental Marketing. 17 plus years now, I’m working exclusively with independent dentists and orthodontics. On this show, we don’t talk or do vanity metrics. We talk about what shows up in your bank account. Today’s topic is one of the biggest shifts in digital marketing I’ve probably seen in 10 plus years, maybe longer.
It’s called Google AI overviews, AI mode, chat, cheap, E T perplexity, Gronk. Yeah. All that stuff, the whole generative search ecosystem and what it means for a local dental practice. I’m going to try to do this without too much jargon. No G E O versus A E O versus AIO alphabet soup crap, just what’s actually changing and what you should do about it. Starting immediately.
So the short version here is, let’s talk about what changed. The short version is Google stopped being a search engine and became an answer engine. Okay. So for 20 years, Google’s job was to give you 10 blue links. You picked one of them, you clicked, you went to a website. The website was the destination. Starting in 2024 and accelerating now through 2025 and 2026, Google’s job became answer the question period.
Chris (02:31.884)
The AI overview shows up at the very top of the page, reads a bunch of websites for you and hands you a tidy summary. The 10 blue links are still there, of course. They just got pushed down below the fold. The numbers are a little brutal actually. A Pew research study across 68,000 real queries found a 46.7 % decline in click rates when an AI overview was present. That’s an 8 % click rate.
with an AI overview versus 15 % without. Ahrefs, which is a big company in the industry, looked at 300,000 keywords and found a 34.5 CTR drop, click through drop, even before the number one organic position. Some sites have reported losing 20 to 60 % of their traffic. And it’s not slowing down. AI overviews now trigger on nearly half of all tracked queries.
58 % year-over-year. So what does this matter to you specifically? Because a huge chunk of what the old dental SEO playbook was built on informational blog content is exactly The content getting absorbed into AI overviews every what is a root canal? How long does teeth whitening last what causes bad breath? Blog post your SEO agency talked you into writing three years ago
Those were designed to rank, bring in traffic, and nurture a patient toward booking. Today, they rank, get summarized into an AI overview, and the patient never clicks. They’re taking your content in some cases, and you’re not getting any reward for it. You’re still doing the work. Google is still showing your content. You’re just not getting paid for it anymore. That’s a big difference. So in this segment, I’m gonna talk about the good news
hiding in the bad news. Okay, I know that was a little bleak, but here’s the actually important part that almost nobody is talking about. AI overviews are not eating all searches equally, not even close. Google itself seems to be making a deliberate choice. AI overviews appear on informational queries roughly 58 % of the time, but commercial queries
Chris (04:58.343)
only about 17 % of the time and navigational queries only about 10 % of the time. E-commerce queries trigger AI overviews only 4 % of the time down from 29 % when they first rolled out. So translation into dental English, what causes tooth sensitivity AI overview almost every time patient never clicks best dentist in your city.
AI overview sometimes, but traditional local packs still dominates. Your practice name, almost never an AI overview, direct traffic intact. Dennis Near Me, including a location name actually makes AI overviews less likely to appear by as much as 11 percentage points. Read that last one twice. Location specific searches are partially protected as of now from AI overviews.
Google understands that when someone is looking for a local business, they need to actually go to the business. So a summary does not cut it. So here’s why I think this is almost good news for dentists. The searches that are getting eaten are the top of the funnel, informational, low intent, somebody wondering if they need a dentist. The searches that are holding up are bottom of the funnel, transactional, more high intent, somebody actually actively looking to book.
So your old SEO strategy probably spent 60 % of its effort on the top of the funnel stuff, the blog content that drove traffic, but not bookings. The effort is now mostly wasted, sort of, but the 40 % spent on dental implants, city for instance, emergency dentist, neighborhood, Google business profile reviews, that stuff is more valuable than it’s ever been because less competition is still in that lane.
and the people clicking are more of the people ready to call. So the dentists who are going to win in the next five years are the ones who quit trying to be web MD and start being the most visible, most trusted, most findable practice for book an appointment type searches in their specific zip code. All right, so what’s dead or dying right now? Let me be specific. Here’s what I’d stop spending money on or at least seriously reevaluate.
Chris (07:21.98)
Generic Informational Blog Posts. If your SEO vendor is cranking out the five top tips for better oral hygiene and what is gingivitis every month, ask them what that’s producing. It’s basically what I call activity-based marketing, activity-based work. They’re checking off boxes and the stuff that they’re doing isn’t going to produce what you want, which is new patients. This is thin, generic content. It’s declining in performance.
really regardless of optimization, winning content now requires real case studies, original data, and demonstrated expertise. The AI can write that blog post in 12 seconds. It’s not making you different. It’s not driving bookings. It’s filling a content calendar. Number two is keyword stuffing and thin service pages. This was outdated even before AI, but the old play of put the keyword 14 times on the page,
It’s not just dead, it’s actively penalized in some people’s thoughts. systems are looking for topical depth, not keyword density. When you use keywords like that, you’re trying to trick Google, right? And Google doesn’t like to be tricked. They don’t like to be played. Number three, directory spray and pray. So signing up for 500 random citation directories used to be standard local SEO hygiene. Now it’s mostly noise.
What matters is consistency and accuracy across the top 20 to 50 that actually feed AI systems, Yelp, HealthGrade, ZockDock, WebMD, and the main dental directories specifically. Number four, the 10 blue links mindset. If you’re obsessed with being number one on a specific keyword, you’re fighting the last war. That’s what you’ve been trained to think all these years. The goal was never rankings. It was visibility. Those aren’t the same thing.
And the distinction matters more now than ever. You can be number one on a keyword that triggers an AI overview and get fewer clicks than the guy at number four on a keyword that doesn’t. Number five, SEO agencies that only report on rankings. This is prehistoric now. If your monthly SEO report still leads with, moved you from position seven to position four on this keyword, you are paying for a metric that matters less and less every month.
Chris (09:44.873)
Calls, form submissions, booked appointments, and AI citations, those are what matter now. In fact, we’ve stopped talking about rankings almost entirely to our clients. So what still works and what works better than ever, in my opinion? Here’s the playbook. Google Business Profile is the single most important asset you own online. It was important before. Now it’s everything. Profile completeness.
Completeness accounts for roughly 32 % of local pack ranking weight and AI systems pulled directly from your GBP to generate local recommendations. If your Google business profile is half finished, has old photos, missing service categories, or no recent photos, that is the single highest ROI fix in your practice right now. Before website redesigns, before new ad campaigns, before anything. So what complete actually means? It means every service category is filled out.
Hours accurate, including holiday hours. 50 plus photos updated quarterly if not monthly. Weekly GBP posts. Services section with prices or price ranges where possible. Q &A section actively monitored. Patients can post questions here and answers show publicly. don’t know if anybody knew that, but it exists. Number two, reviews, especially long detailed ones. It’s hard to control these, I know, but they do matter.
Five-star rankings alone don’t cut it anymore. Generic five-star rankings hold less value than comprehensive reviews explaining treatment, experiences, office atmosphere, and clinical outcomes. AI systems read the actual words of these reviews. A review that says, Smith did my implant, explained every step, and the whole thing costs X is feeding AI with specific, citable information about your practice. So train your team to ask for reviews in a way that prompts specifics.
not please leave us a review. More like if you have a minute, could you mention what we did and how it went? Number three, schema markup, the technical piece most dentists skip and most of you probably don’t even know what this is. And I don’t blame you. Schema markup basically tells search engines and AI systems what your practice is, where it operates and what it offers. Local business schema with dentists as the type with NAP data, name address, phone data.
Chris (12:10.587)
hours, accepted insurance and services and structured data plus FAQ page schema on your service pages directly supports AI view overview citations. I know I promised no jargon. That’s as basic as it gets though. If you need help with this stuff, just call me, right? This is a one-time fix though that your web developer can do in a couple hours. Most dental websites I audit do not have this set up correctly and it can be
This is a free month. This is like free money sitting on the table because your competitors probably aren’t doing it Number four service pages that answer real patient questions. This is where new SEO lives instead of a generic dental implants Page just a page with three paragraphs you want a dedicated page for implants that answers cost candidacy procedure recovery and alternatives Every of your service pages needs to have an FAQ section
on that page with the actual questions patients ask along with the answers and structured so that a specific answer to a specific question can be pulled by an AI system. AI overviews tend to pull from content that states its answer clearly within the first few paragraphs, not buried at the bottom of a 3000 word post. If a patient asks a question, answer it in the first 100 words on a page, then elaborate below that. Number five, local
Hyper-content. Pages about your specific city, neighborhood, and surrounding areas. Google is preserving traditional search for location-specific queries. So dental implants, your city, is one of those valuable keyword targets you can build content around. Most of your competitors are neglecting this. Number six, brand mentions, even without links. AI models pay attention to mentions of your practice on third-party sites, review forums, and social media.
Even when those mentions don’t include a link ambient online presence presence affects whether you show up in AI responses This is why local PR community involvement podcast appearances hint hint and local News features are more valuable than they look and seriously if you want to be a guest on this podcast ring me up We’ll hook you up. All right number seven being cited not just ranked
Chris (14:31.012)
Sites that earn citations inside AI overviews can actually see click-through increases up to 35%. Being the source Google chooses to cite is its own visibility challenge, even when it doesn’t drive a direct click. A patient who reads an AI overview citing Dr. Smith family dental is now primed to recognize your name when they see you in the local pack or at Google search. So,
I want to talk about the social media wrinkle that nobody really talks about here. And here’s where the, here’s the part that’s going to make some of you a little bit uncomfortable. You know, I love to do that in these podcasts, but 43 % of Gen Z and millennial consumers now start, now start local business searches on TikTok or Instagram, not Google. Google’s March, 2026 core update started incorporating social signals into rankings much more aggressively than they did before.
So the translation here is your Instagram presence is now a local SEO signal. I know I can hear from you going, I’m 58 years old and I don’t want to make TikToks of myself. Fine. You don’t have to be the one on camera, but your practice needs a presence on at least one visual platform. Instagram for most dental practices with consistent posting because Google’s crawling it and using the signals. It’s AI systems that pull mentions from it.
and a big chunk of your next generation of patients aren’t starting on Google anymore. This doesn’t have to be elaborate practice exterior team highlights, before and afters were legally appropriate, community involvement, local event sponsorships. If you post twice a week with real content, you’re ahead of 80 % of your competitors. Now here’s the 90 day action plan that I want you to put together. If I were sitting across from you and you asked me, where do I start?
This is what I’d tell you to do in the next 90 days, days one through third 30 audit and fix the foundation. Pull your Google search console data. Compare your click through on informational pages versus service transactional type pages over the last 12 months. See the gap for yourself. Audit your Google business profile against the checklist I gave you earlier. Fix every gap. Run a nap consistency audit across the top 20 directories.
Chris (16:52.505)
Fix any mismatches. That’s name, address, phone number. Get schema markup, especially the local business with dentist type. The FAQ page on service pages as well. Get these installed if you don’t have it. Start testing AI search directly. Open chat GPT, perplexity, Google AI mode. Search best dentist in your city, dental implants in your city, city, whatever. Emergency dentist in your neighborhood. See if you show up. Write down what’s coming up instead of you.
Days 31 to 60, rebuild your highest value pages. Pick your top five revenue producing services. For each one, rewrite the service page to answer real questions patients ask in the first 100 words of the page with an FAQ section at the bottom. Build or update a dedicated page for each neighborhood or community that you serve. Launch a review campaign focused specifically on just reviews. Train the team on how to ask for reviews.
Now day 61 through 90 build the ongoing engine. Commit to weekly Google posts, Google business profile posts, not optional anymore. Commit to at least two social posts a week, preferably video or photo. Set up monthly AI citation tracking, which AI tools cite your practice when someone asks for a dentist in your area. Boostability does this really well by the way, or not boostability, it’s what’s it called? Is it boostability?
Rankability, sorry, rankability. It’s all the abilities that confuse me. Shift your SEO reporting though, from rankings to calls, form fills, booked appointments, AI citations. So here’s the thesis for this episode in one line. The SEO game didn’t end. It just stopped rewarding the things most dentists were paying for and probably still are. Generic blog posts, keyword stuffing and ranking reports were the old game.
Google Business Profile, detailed reviews, schema markup, hyper local pages, and AI citations are the new game. The practices that make the pivot in the next 12 to 18 months, maybe less, are gonna own their markets. The practices that keep paying an agency to crank out five things to know about your teeth whitening are gonna wake up in 2027 wondering where their patients went. You don’t need to understand every acronym. You don’t need to become an AI expert.
Chris (19:14.401)
You just need to know where the money actually comes from now and invest your marketing there. Now, if this episode was useful, share it with one dentist, you know, who’s frustrated with their SEO vendor. That’s who this one’s for. Also, please hit subscribe, share, like, whatever gizmo or gadget you’re on, or what source you’re watching or listening to this on. if you share it and subscribe and all that fun stuff, we’ll make sure we let you know when we drop our next episode.
The next episode is going to be a doozy as well. I’m not going to give you any more hints than that though. So I’m Chris Pistorius. Thanks so much for listening.
