Resource
By Renownly · Updated June 2026
How patients now use AI to find a clinic, what actually gets a med spa recommended by ChatGPT and Google’s AI, and why AI referrals are worth more — the key 2026 numbers, each one sourced. We keep this current as new data lands.
~60% of consumers have used generative AI for a health-related decision
AI assistants are now part of how patients research treatments and providers — and they typically return one or two named recommendations, not ten links.
Source: BCG (via industry reporting)
ChatGPT drives the majority (~60%) of AI referral traffic
Among AI assistants sending people to websites, ChatGPT leads — which matters because of where ChatGPT actually pulls its answers from (below).
Proximity has ~zero correlation (r=0.001) with which local businesses Google's AI Overview cites
Unlike the map pack, the AI Overview names the most citable, well-corroborated answer — not the nearest pin. A readable cost page beats being closest.
Source: Local Falcon, 60,000-query study
87% of ChatGPT local citations matched Bing's top results — Bing visibility matters for ChatGPT, not just Google
ChatGPT draws heavily on Bing (alongside its own crawler), so a clinic can dominate Google Maps and still be missing from ChatGPT. Bing Places + indexing is the most-skipped lever for ChatGPT visibility.
Source: Seer Interactive
Branded web mentions correlate with AI visibility ~3× more strongly than backlinks
Being genuinely talked about (local press, YouTube, forums) teaches the model you're a real, citable business — more than traditional link-building.
Source: Ahrefs, 75,000-brand study
Page structure alone lifts AI citations ~17%
Holding content constant and only improving structure — question headings, real tables, short paragraphs — measurably increased citations across engines.
Source: GEO-SFE study, 2026
Adding specific statistics to a page lifts AI visibility up to ~40%
AI prefers to quote content with concrete numbers — for a med spa, that's a real per-unit price stated as a direct answer.
~76% of ChatGPT citations come from content updated within the last 30 days
Pricing is a 'freshness' topic — a cost page with a stale date gets dropped. A 60–90 day refresh keeps you in the citation set.
Source: Content-freshness studies, 2025
llms.txt: ~97% are never read by AI crawlers, and Google says no AI system uses it
Despite the hype, llms.txt does not drive citations today. Don't pay for it as an AEO deliverable.
Source: Ahrefs; Google Search Advocate
AI-referred visitors convert up to ~4.4× more often than organic search clicks
The AI does the comparison before the click, so an AI-referred patient arrives closer to booking — a higher-value visit than a cold search click.
Source: Semrush, June 2025
Check in 30 seconds whether AI names your clinic for treatments in your city — we work with only one clinic per city.
Figures are attributed to their original sources; some are peer-reviewed studies and some are industry/practitioner data — follow each link to judge for yourself. Informational only.