Chris (00:07.713)
Welcome to the No BS Dental Growth Podcast, the show for independent practice owners who are tired of paying for vanity metrics and ready to talk about what actually drives new patients and net income. I’m Chris Pistorius, founder of Kickstart Dental Marketing. We have worked exclusively with dental practices for over 17 years. And on this show, I’m going to give you the same straight talk that I give our clients, the stuff that most agencies
won’t say because their margins depend on you not knowing it. No fluff, no buzzwords, real numbers, hard truths, and the strategies that actually move the needle in your practice. All right, let’s get into today’s episode. Last week, I don’t know if you saw this, but probably not because you’re not a nerd like me, but Google quietly published a document that if you read it the right way,
just blew up about half the pitches your friendly neighborhood AI marketing agency has been making for the last few months, if not a year by now. You’ve probably gotten the email about this, AEO is the future, the GEO is here and you need to do something now type email, AI search, this kind of stuff. You know, the guy was somewhere, there’s like somebody in a hoodie and the dark background that tell it, wait.
I’m in a hoodie. Forget that. But they turn it tell you everything you know about SEO is dead. know, search engine optimization is now it’s all AI, right? And you need to pay them perhaps to do a special optimization for chat GPT and Google’s AI before your practice disappears from the internet forever. Well, Google just looked at all of that and basically said, yeah, that’s not a thing.
That’s just SEO with a little bit of a different haircut. So today I’m going to walk through what Google actually said because I painstakingly read everything, what it means for your dental practice and how to spot the people in your inbox or your voicemails who are selling you fear instead of actual results. Let’s get into it. So here’s the deal. Google put out this official guide on how to show up on or in AI search results.
Chris (02:31.98)
There’s AI overviews, there’s AI mode. know, when you do Google searches, when you do a search now at the very top is the AI answer. And then it goes into kind of the, the other paid for SEO organic rankings. that’s what’s considered, you know, AI mode or AI search is when somebody types in something like that, like best Dennis near me and those AI recommendations, are at the top.
They, they do a good job of answering questions. but what I don’t think they did a real good job of is, okay, well, I’ve been paying for SEO, or I’ve been doing my own SEO maybe, and I show up really high. Do I now need to do something different or pay somebody else to do something different for me? instead of what I’m already doing now to show up in those search results.
And their answer for in this document now paraphrased, course, is nah, it’s still SEO. The AI features are built on top of the same ranking systems that they’ve always used. The phrases answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization, the AEO, GEO, those are just marketing terms invented by people selling services.
Google itself does not recognize them as a separate discipline. Now, why does that matter to you, the practice owner? Because if somebody has come into your inbox or called you within the last six months, selling you a GEO package or an AEO upgrade for two grand a month or something, and on top of what you’re already paying for, you should stop and ask, what exactly am I getting that isn’t already good SEO? But in your defense,
You’re not the one doing this every day. How are you supposed to stay on top of it? That’s why it’s so critically important to work with companies that you can trust, that you know, that have good reviews, that work in dentistry, people that have your back. You’re not just a customer number to them. That’s why it’s so critical to be able to hire somebody that you can trust for that. Not always a big agency with, you know, maybe not your best interest in mind. So a lot of the time, though, what you have to do is nothing.
Chris (04:58.931)
If you’re already paying for SEO, if they’re doing it correctly, you would potentially be paying a premium for just a buzzword. Now, I want to be fair here. Yes, AI search is changing how patients find you. And yes, you need to pay attention, but the work to show up in AI overviews is the same work that gets you to show up in regular Google. Be a real business, have a clean site, an optimized site, have unique content, have a strong Google business profile.
and have actual humans talking about you online. There is no secret AI handshake here. Okay, so if it’s not magic AI dust, what does win? Google was crystal clear on this. The single biggest thing in their document, the single biggest thing bigger than any technical tweak, any markup, any tag, is what they called non-commodity content. So let me translate that out of nerd speak.
Commodity content is the stuff you’ve seen a thousand times. Seven tips for a brighter smile. What to expect at your first dental visit. The benefits of flossing. Every dental website on planet earth has these articles. The AI has read all of them. They blend together. They’re just wallpaper. Content wallpaper is what I call them. Non-commodity content is the stuff like you could write or an agency can write on your behalf.
A breakdown of what actually happens, for instance, when a new patient comes in terrified after avoiding the dentist for 10 years and exactly how your team walks them through it. A real case where a patient came in for, you know, maybe a crown and you found a bigger structural problem and what you did about that. Your honest take on why most mail order clear aligner kits are maybe a bad idea with the specific things that you’ve seen them mess up.
That’s the stuff Google’s AI wants to surface. Because when somebody asks GPT or Google AI, is this dental thing legit? The AI doesn’t want to recycle generic content. It’s looking for someone who has actually been in the room. Now here’s where this hits home for an independent practice. The DSOs cannot do this. They cannot pull a real opinionated dentist on the page most of the time because there is no one dentist.
Chris (07:23.144)
Or maybe the one dentist just doesn’t really care about that. They just want to do their dentistry, right? They’ve got brand guidelines at DSOs and legal review and a content team in another state writing smile articles. You, the owner, the doc, the manager are the asset that they don’t always have. And you should leverage that. If you take nothing else from this episode, take this 10 pieces of generic content, get you nowhere. One piece of real opinionated.
First-hand content from you, the dentist, will outperform all 10. Now the fun part. Google specifically called out a bunch of AISCO tactics that they say are a waste of your money. Now if you’re driving, don’t pull over. You can always watch this at a different time. But if you’re at home or at an office, pull out a pin. You might want to write some of this down. I want to make sure that your current marketing agency, if you’re paying for this, isn’t charging you for any of these.
And sometimes I’ll try to hide it so it’s not really easy to find, but you need to ask them a hard question this week. And here’s some myths that I want to try to demystify, if you will. Number one is this LLMS.txt file. This is, I had to look this one up because I didn’t know what it was, but this is some new AI text file. Some agencies are charging to install on your website. It’s supposed to help the AI read your content better.
Google said straight up, not necessary, not used, doesn’t matter, nothing to read here. Okay, not a thing. Myth number two, chunking your content. The idea that you have to break your pages into tiny little pieces so the AI can digest them. Nope. Google said that their systems already understand pages just fine, just right for humans. Myth number three, rewriting your content for AI. There’s no special AI friendly language, folks.
The AI understands synonyms and meaning. You do not need to pay somebody to AI-ify your existing pages. Myth number four, paying for fake mentions of your practice on random blogs and forums. Don’t do this. This is like 1990 stuff, but this is like the inauthentic mentions hustle. Google said it directly. Their systems catch that and it doesn’t help. You are paying somebody to make you look spammy, essentially.
Chris (09:46.138)
Myth number five, getting cute with structured data and schema markup. This is a little more technical and schema markup is fine to use. We use it all the time, but it has a place and it’s not the secret sauce. If somebody is selling you a $5,000 schema overhaul or a thousand dollars even as the key to AI visibility, they’re selling you smoke. So picture this, you’re paying a couple thousand dollars a month to a marketing vendor.
three of those things are on the invoice in some form. That’s a problem. That’s a conversation you need to have. All right, let’s flip the script then. What does Google say actually does move the needle? Five things, write these down. Number one, your site has to be technically clean. Loads fast, works on a phone. Google can crawl it without tripping over broken links or broken pages. This is table stakes. If your site is from 2014 and takes nine seconds to load on a phone,
No amount of AI’s optimization is going to save you. And the user experience, by the way, is going to be horrible. So website has to be ready to roll. Number two, your Google business profile. This is your single most powerful local asset. Uploaded photos, current hours, accurate services, active responses to reviews, regular posting on there. The AI pulls from this directly. So when somebody searches Dennis near me,
If your Google business profile looks dead, you look dead. Number three, real reviews from real patients and recent ones. Not a one-time scrape of every patient you’ve ever had, a steady drip. Google’s AI weights recency. So a practice with 25 reviews in the last six months will eat up a practice with 300 reviews from 2019. Number four, content only you could create.
We covered this, your perspective, your cases, your opinions, your video, even if it’s just you on your phone for 90 seconds explaining why you don’t do a certain procedure anymore. That’s just gold. And number five, show up where patients actually look, not just Google. I’m talking YouTube, where they’re researching procedures, Facebook and Instagram, where they’re vetting you before they call maybe. The reviews on Yelp, on health grades. The AI is scraping all of
Chris (12:07.547)
That’s it. That’s the list. No special files, no magic dust, no potions, no AEO, no GEO, just being a real, visible, well-run business online. Okay, action item. I want you to do one thing this week. Pull up your last invoice from your current marketing vendor, look at the line items, then send them this email and feel free to steal this word for word. Hey, I just heard about Google’s official guide on AI search optimization.
Can you walk me through which of your current activities map to what Google says actually matters and which line items, if any, are based on AEO or GEO tactics that Google has said aren’t needed? Then check for what comes back. Now, they send you a clear, confident, specific answer trying to tie in your spend to the things Google actually rewards, great, keep them. That’s a real partner. But if they get defensive, if they send you a wall of jargon, if they say Google doesn’t
want you to really know what the secrets are, that kind of stuff, there’s your answer. That’s a vendor that protecting their invoice instead of your practice. And look, I run a marketing agency for 17 years now. I’m not telling you to fire your agency. I’m telling you to make them earn it. The good ones will welcome the question. The ones selling you smoke will dodge it. So here’s the bottom line. Marketing in 2026 has a problem. It’s a great year to be a hustler.
The technology is changing fast enough that anybody can show up in your inbox claiming to be an expert in whatever new thing just got named. AI, GEO, AEO, whatever’s next, right? They sell on fear. Google just gave you a cheat sheet though. They told you in their own words, what works and what doesn’t. The agencies that are real built their work around what Google actually rewards. The agency that aren’t built their pitch around what sounds new and scary.
all about fear. can tell which one you’re working with by asking one simple question this week. So if you want to keep thinking through any of this, what your vendor is doing, what you should be doing, whether the content on your site is a commodity or non-commodity, head over to our website, kickstartdental.com, and we’ll walk you through it. All right, that’s the show this week. If the episode gave you one uncomfortable thing to think about, that’s a good thing.
Chris (14:31.514)
Do me a favor, hit subscribe or follow wherever you’re listening. That’s how this show grows and that’s how more independent practice owners get pulled out of the buzzword swamp. While you’re there, drop a rating and review for me. Five stars if I earned it, fewer if I didn’t. I’d rather have your honest feedback though than a polite lie. And if you know another practice owner who’s getting hustled by their current marketing vendor maybe or just are unsure, share this episode with them. You might save them a few thousand dollars.
I’m Chris Pistorius. This has been the No BS Dental Growth podcast. And until next time, keep it simple, keep it real and stop paying for BS.
