Where do ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI get their med-spa recommendations?

Each answer engine has its own retrieval pipeline. ChatGPT’s and Copilot’s web results are powered largely by Bing, so they tend to name businesses that are well-represented in Bing’s index and on the directories Bing trusts. Perplexity runs a fresh web search for nearly every question, which rewards recent, clearly-written pages. Google’s AI Overview pulls from Google’s index. Because the sources differ, being named in one assistant doesn’t mean you’ll be named in the others — you have to earn each one.

The most common blind spot is Bing. Almost all med-spa marketing is built around Google, yet ChatGPT is the assistant patients reach for most, and its recommendations lean on Bing and third-party listings rather than Google. A clinic with a strong Google presence and no Bing footprint can simply not exist to ChatGPT. The same goes for the niche sources these engines trust in aesthetics — RealSelf, Healthgrades, Yelp, Google reviews — where your name, location, and details need to be consistent so the AI can corroborate you.

The practical takeaway: don’t optimize for a single engine. Make your key facts (a real price, the questions patients ask, your location and offerings) readable on your own site, then make sure they’re consistent across the third-party sources each engine pulls from — and don’t skip Bing. Our free AI-visibility audit checks where you currently show up across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI, and which competitor each one names instead.