AI-powered search is changing how people find information online. Instead of browsing lists of websites, people are increasingly asking tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for recommendations, comparisons and answers to specific questions.
For private healthcare providers, this raises an important question: when prospective patients ask these platforms to recommend a clinic, does your practice appear in the response?
As part of Patient Pulse 2025, we analysed more than 4,000 private healthcare websites to assess how well prepared they are for AI-powered search. Our findings suggest there is still significant room for improvement across the sector.
What we found
Our analysis revealed several common issues that may affect how well clinic websites are understood by AI-powered search platforms:
- 98.6% of websites had no llms.txt file – an emerging standard that helps AI systems understand how website content should be accessed and interpreted. Only 58 of the 4,252 websites analysed had one.
- Around 1 in 23 websites blocked GPTBot, ChatGPT’s web crawler, through their robots.txt file. In some cases, this may limit how content is accessed by AI-powered search tools.
- 574 websites had no robots.txt file at all, providing no guidance to search engines or AI crawlers.
- 29% of websites had neither a blog nor an FAQ section, limiting the amount of helpful content available for search engines and AI platforms to reference.
Taken together, these findings suggest that many clinics are not yet well prepared for the growing role of AI-powered search.
Why this matters
AI-powered search works differently from traditional search engines. Rather than relying primarily on keywords, these platforms use a combination of content, structure, context and other signals to generate responses and recommendations.
That means the technical quality of your website, together with the way your content is organised and presented, is becoming increasingly important. Clinics that are easier for AI systems to understand are more likely to be referenced when users ask relevant questions.
Many of the people using AI-powered search are also those who are comfortable researching healthcare providers independently before making a decision. As discussed in our article on why referrals alone are no longer enough, this reflects a broader change in how prospective patients discover and compare private clinics.
The opportunity
Although our research identified several common gaps, many of them can be addressed with relatively straightforward improvements.
Clinics don’t need to overhaul their websites to begin preparing for AI-powered search.
Some of the most effective steps include:
- Check your robots.txt file. Make sure it isn’t unintentionally blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended.
- Add an llms.txt file. This provides guidance about the most important content on your website for AI systems.
- Implement schema markup. Structured data helps search engines and AI-powered search platforms understand your services, locations, reviews and FAQs.
- Publish helpful, question-led content. Blogs and FAQs that answer the questions prospective patients are already asking provide useful information for both users and AI-powered search.
- Maintain strong technical performance. Website speed and stability remain important for both traditional search and AI-powered search, as discussed in our article on why nearly half of clinic websites fail Google’s performance test.
Where to start
Preparing your website for AI-powered search doesn’t necessarily require a complete rebuild. In many cases, it’s about strengthening the technical foundations and content that are already in place.
That’s exactly what our AI Visibility Accelerator does — a 30-day programme to get your clinic found and recommended across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
If you’d like to understand how well your clinic is prepared for AI-powered search, book a free AI visibility check. We’ll assess how your website performs today and explain the practical steps that could help improve its visibility.
This article draws on Patient Pulse 2025, Figment’s original research into marketing in UK private healthcare. Read the full report.
More from Patient Pulse 2025
- Why referrals alone are no longer enough
- Why half of clinic sites fail Google’s speed test
- 75% of clinics run on WordPress
- Read the full Patient Pulse 2025 report »
Book a free, no-obligation review of your clinic’s online presence »
