AI Search for Dentists in North Hertfordshire | Attract More Patients Online
I was at a barbecue in Letchworth over the summer (my wife's friend's husband's 50th, you know the drill) and got chatting to a woman who'd just switched dentists. I asked what happened. Had the old one done something wrong? Bad experience?
"No," she said. "I just asked ChatGPT which dentist in Letchworth was best for nervous patients and it recommended somewhere different."
Twenty years of loyalty to her old practice, gone. Not because the practice did anything wrong. Because an AI recommended a competitor and she trusted it.
That stuck with me. And it should stick with you if you run a dental practice anywhere in North Hertfordshire.
Patients are finding dentists differently now
This isn't a prediction. This is happening.
When someone in Hitchin gets a cracked tooth on a Saturday morning, a growing number of them don't open Google. They open ChatGPT or Perplexity and type something like "I've cracked a tooth and it's killing me, which dentist in Hitchin can see me today?" The AI gives them one name. Maybe two. That's the entire shortlist.
No ten blue links. No comparison websites. No "let me check a few reviews first." One answer and a phone number.
If your practice isn't in that answer, the patient is gone before you even knew they existed.
I had a practice owner from Stevenage come to see me in January. Sharp woman, commercially minded, been running her practice for about fifteen years. She'd noticed new patient enquiries dropping since the autumn but couldn't figure out why. Google rankings hadn't moved. Her reviews were strong. Nothing obvious had changed.
Took me about fifteen minutes to find the problem. We opened three different AI tools and asked them variations of "who's the best dentist in Stevenage." Her practice wasn't mentioned in any of them. Not once. Three competitors were, including one practice that only opened in 2024.
She went quiet for a bit after that.
Why AI ignores most dental practice websites
Here's the thing. It's not that AI dislikes your practice. It's that your website gives it nothing to work with.
Most dental websites I look at across Hertfordshire follow the same template. Nice photos of smiling people (stock, usually). A list of services with one-sentence descriptions. A page about the team. Maybe a blog with three posts from 2021 about flossing.
"We provide high quality dental care for the whole family in a friendly, relaxed environment."
Every practice says this. Literally every single one. The AI reads that, finds zero useful information, and moves on to the practice that actually bothered to explain something specific.
Specificity is what separates practices that AI recommends from practices it ignores. "We're one of four practices in North Hertfordshire offering same-day dental crowns using CEREC technology, which means one appointment instead of two with a temporary crown in between." That's specific. The AI can match that against a real patient question. It can recommend you with confidence because you've given it a concrete reason to.
The FAQ problem
Nearly every dental practice has an FAQ page.
Nearly every dental practice gets it wrong.
The typical dental FAQ answers questions like "Are you accepting new patients?", "Where can I park?", and "Do you accept payment plans?" These are logistics questions. Useful for someone who's already decided to book. Useless for someone who's still deciding which practice to choose.
The questions people ask AI are research questions. Decision questions.
"How long do veneers actually last?" "What's the difference between composite and porcelain veneers and which is better?" "Is it worth getting Invisalign at forty-five or am I too old?" "Why does my jaw click when I eat and should I be worried?"
Those questions. The ones that reveal someone is thinking about a treatment and trying to work out what to do. If your website answers those questions in proper detail (not two-line brush-offs, actual thorough answers), the AI discovers that content and files it away. Next time someone asks a similar question, you're in the running to be recommended.
A practice in Baldock I've been working with added detailed answers to twenty-two patient questions. Real depth, some of them running to five or six hundred words. Topics like sedation options, implant timelines, what a root canal actually involves step by step, whether it's worth going private for orthodontics. Within about a month, they were getting calls from patients who specifically said "I read your explanation about X" or "ChatGPT sent me to your website."
That's AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) doing its job. If you want the nuts and bolts of how to write these properly, I covered it in how to write FAQs that ChatGPT actually uses.
Your Google Business Profile feeds the AI
Bit counterintuitive this one. You'd think with AI replacing Google search, your Google Business Profile would matter less.
Opposite.
AI tools pull from Google's knowledge graph and structured data. Your Google Business Profile is one of the most structured, verified data sources about your practice on the internet. When it's complete, current and detailed, you're giving AI systems a reliable foundation to build their understanding of your practice.
When it's a ghost town with services listed as just "dental services", no Q&As, photos from 2020, and opening hours that don't match your website...
You're giving the AI reasons to not trust your information. And an AI that doesn't trust your information doesn't recommend you. Simple as that. I went deeper on this in how your Google Business Profile affects AI search if you want the full picture.
Treatment pages that AI can actually use
You've got pages for each treatment on your website. I'd bet good money they're short, vague, and written in that cautious, committee-approved tone that says everything and nothing simultaneously.
What AI needs is different. It needs content that genuinely helps a patient understand a treatment before they pick up the phone. What's involved, step by step. How long it takes. What recovery looks like, honestly. What it roughly costs (ranges are fine, people understand prices vary). What problems it solves. Who it's suitable for and who it isn't.
A Royston practice I work with had a dental implants page that was about 150 words. We expanded it to 800, covering the consultation process, the surgery itself, healing time (real timelines, not the optimistic textbook version), aftercare, cost ranges, financing options, and what to expect at each stage. We also added a section on when implants aren't the right option, which felt counterintuitive to the practice owner but the AI loved it. Honesty reads as authority.
That page now gets cited in AI responses regularly for implant queries across North Hertfordshire. One page.
Case studies are gold
If there's one thing I could get every dental practice to do tomorrow, it would be to publish three case studies.
They don't need to be fancy. Describe a patient scenario (anonymised obviously). What the problem was. What treatment you recommended and why. How it went. What the outcome was. Include the area the patient was from. Maybe a before and after photo.
That's it. A few paragraphs each.
The AI uses these to build a picture of what you actually do, not just what you say you do. And when a potential patient describes a problem to ChatGPT that sounds like one of your case studies, guess whose name comes up? I've written specifically about formatting case studies for AI search if you want a template.
Don't leave it six months
I'll be direct. If you ignore AI search, your practice won't collapse overnight. Patients will still find you through Google, through word of mouth, through the usual channels.
But those channels are shrinking. Slowly, steadily, the proportion of patients finding their dentist through AI is growing. The practices that sort this out now will be the established, trusted names when AI search becomes the primary way people choose a dentist. The ones that wait will be fighting for whatever's left.
In North Hertfordshire specifically, I've found maybe three practices that have done any meaningful work on AEO. Three. That's the competition right now. It won't be that thin for long.
If you want to talk about what this looks like for your practice, book a call and I'll walk you through it. Or read the fuller guide on AEO for North Hertfordshire businesses for the broader picture.