Clinics and medical practices: visible in AI answers, within the ethics rules

Updated 27 September 2026

Many patients now ask an AI for “a dermatologist taking on new patients in [town]”. For a healthcare professional, the point isn’t to advertise, which professional ethics strictly limit, but to make useful information accurate and easy to find. This guide shows how, using the framework that applies in France as its reference.

What AIs check for a healthcare professional

• Appointment booking platforms such as Doctolib: specialty, procedures, languages, access, fee arrangements.
• Official directories, such as the French national health insurance directory or the medical council’s register.
• Your Google Business Profile: address, opening hours, accessibility, reviews.
• The practice’s or clinic’s website, if it clearly describes specialties, team and practical information.

Health is one of the topics where Google gives extra weight to trust signals (E-E-A-T). Verifiable, dated information is your best asset.

What professional ethics allow you to publish

This framework is perfectly compatible with good visibility in AI answers: what the AIs are looking for is precisely facts.

• One page per practitioner: specialty, degrees and qualifications, languages spoken, consultation days.
• One page per area of care or type of procedure, with scientifically supported, dated medical information and no promise of results.
• A practical information page: address, directions, accessibility, fees and how they are covered, how to book.
• An “in an emergency” page that points to the right numbers.
• MedicalClinic or Physician structured data (schema.org), matching the visible content.

Patient reviews: handle with care

The French medical council points out that review systems for professionals are not illegal in themselves. But the framework calls for particular care.

• Don’t reproduce patient testimonials on your website: medical ethics rules forbid it.
• In a public reply to a review, never confirm that someone is your patient or give any detail of their care: medical confidentiality applies.
• Reply on organisational points (waiting times, reception, access) in neutral terms, or offer to talk privately.
• Before setting up any review requests, check with your professional body.

Mistakes to avoid

• Different opening hours or addresses on Doctolib, Google and your website, a common source of errors in AI answers.
• A practitioner who has left still listed, or a new one missing.
• Comparative or promotional wording (“the best centre in the region”), which breaches ethics rules.
• Check your robots.txt file: blocking OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot or PerplexityBot can keep you out of answers that use web search. You can refuse the training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) without blocking the search ones.

Healthcare checklist

• Identical information on your website, Google, booking platforms and directories.
• One page per practitioner with verifiable qualifications.
• Sourced, dated medical information pages.
• No patient testimonials on your website.
• Replies to reviews that respect medical confidentiality.
• Structured data matching the visible content.
• AI search crawlers allowed in robots.txt.

Measure your visibility in AI answers

Beyond being present, check accuracy: an assistant that gives the wrong opening hours or a specialty you don’t practise causes real problems for patients. Saykora’s free test asks ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude with web search on and, on top of the AI Score out of 100, lists the AIs’ factual errors about your practice, checked against your website. See an example report.

FAQ

Other sectors: Restaurants · Hotels · Law firms · Accountants · Estate agents · E-commerce · B2B SaaS