To audit what prospective patients may find, check the same doctor and practice searches, review profiles, and AI prompts on a recorded schedule. Save the date, locale, exact query or prompt, results, and source links each time. This creates a useful snapshot to correct factual errors and track changes; it does not measure clinical quality or guarantee control over rankings or AI recommendations.
What to record before you start
Make a separate worksheet for each clinician and practice location. Record the audit date and time, location or search locale, device and browser context, whether you were signed in, and the exact query or prompt. A private browsing window is one useful way to check search results, but it does not guarantee a neutral view or identical results for every prospective patient.
Keep screenshots and result URLs with their dates. Use the same queries and prompts at the next audit so you can compare observations rather than relying on memory. If several staff members contribute, use one shared format so differences in recording do not look like changes in visibility.
Which searches and profiles should you check?
Search engines
Search the physician’s full name, name plus specialty, name plus city, practice name, and practice name plus specialty. Note what appears on the first page, then inspect relevant deeper results when they contain patient-facing profiles, reviews, credential listings, news, or outdated claims. Record the result’s position in the page, title, URL, and any factual issue; a position observed once is not evidence of a lasting ranking.
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For a practice website, Google Search Console can provide information directly from Google Search. Google cautions that third-party services do not have access to Google’s internal ranking data and that using them does not guarantee ranking success. It also urges caution about claims involving AI experiences. Google Search Central’s guidance on third-party SEO tools and advice is a useful reference when assessing vendor promises.
Review and directory profiles
Start with Google and Yelp, then check Facebook if the practice has a profile. Add physician directories and other platforms that appear prominently for the actual specialty, location, and name; prominence varies, so a fixed list cannot cover every market. Verify profile ownership where possible and compare the displayed name, specialty, address, contact details, hours, biography, and links with the practice’s authoritative information.
For each profile, record the displayed rating, review count, date of the newest review, and recurring themes. Themes might include communication, access, scheduling, or billing. A reviewer’s account describes a reported experience; it is not, by itself, evidence of clinical quality.
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Compare the channels consistently
| Channel | What to capture | What the observation can tell you |
|---|---|---|
| Search results | Exact query, locale, date, result position, title, URL, and any outdated or inaccurate claim | What appeared in that recorded search context |
| Review and directory profiles | Platform, profile URL, factual details, displayed rating, review count, newest review date, recurring themes | Whether profiles are accurate and what patterns of reported experience recur |
| AI assistants | Assistant, date, exact prompt, full answer, named clinicians, citations or links, errors, and any refusal to recommend | What that assistant returned for that prompt at that time |
When comparing two doctors, practices, or channels, look at factual accuracy and completeness, where results appear across recorded contexts, review recency and themes, and whether any public responses protect privacy. For AI answers, also compare who is named, what sources support the answer, and whether the output is repeatable. Do not reduce a comparison to star ratings or treat an AI answer as a quality ranking.
How should you audit AI assistant answers?
Choose assistants that prospective patients in the practice’s market are likely to use. Use a short, stable prompt set, such as “Which [specialty] doctors are available in [city]?” and “What information supports recommending [doctor name] in [city]?” Keep the wording, location, and context consistent between audits.
Record the assistant and date, exact prompt, full answer, doctors named, factual errors, cited sources or links, and whether the assistant declined to recommend anyone. Check factual claims against official practice pages and reliable directories, and follow the citations rather than relying only on the assistant’s explanation. Available evidence does not establish a standardized audit protocol that works across all assistants, so the record is a repeatable local check, not a universal score.
A 2026 preprint by Syeda Anshrah Gillani and Mirza Samad Ahmed Baig tested seven models using synthetic physician cards in randomized choice sets. In that experiment, changing a card’s rating from 3.9 to 4.7 increased choice probability by 31.4 percentage points. That is a result from a controlled synthetic-profile experiment, not an estimate of real doctors’ visibility or patient booking behavior. The authors also report that model explanations did not reliably reveal all factors affecting choices. The paper is a preprint, not a basis for predicting an individual clinician’s outcomes: read the 2026 preprint.
How should you correct problems and respond to reviews?
Fix factual information first
Correct the practice website and profiles the practice controls first. For third-party listings, use the platform’s correction or reporting process. Keep a record of the requested correction, the platform, and its status so the next audit can show whether the information changed.
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Protect patient privacy in public replies
The AMA says physicians may respond to reviews, but must not disclose patient-specific information or acknowledge that a reviewer is a patient—even if the reviewer has shared personal details. It recommends speaking generally about office policies and standard practices rather than rebutting a reviewer’s account with case details. A general invitation to contact the practice privately is safer than discussing a specific encounter in public. See the AMA guidance on responding to online patient reviews.
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Pause before replying, check the platform’s rules, and consult practice privacy or compliance leadership when uncertain. The ADA also advises taking time before responding, using a professional and empathetic tone, and moving sensitive conversations offline. That guidance is written for dental practices; physicians should follow applicable physician rules and local law rather than assume every detail transfers unchanged. The ADA’s online-review guidance also cautions that confirming someone was a patient may disclose protected information.
Ask for feedback without filtering it
Request honest feedback without directing requests only to patients expected to be satisfied or suppressing genuine negative reviews. The UK Competition and Markets Authority’s 2025 guidance for online review sites says genuine positive and negative reviews should be presented fairly and warns against those practices. It is UK-specific guidance, not a statement of law everywhere; requirements also vary by jurisdiction and platform. Consult local rules before setting a review-request policy. Read the CMA guidance.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How often should you repeat the audit?
Repeat the same searches and AI prompts on a regular schedule, and after meaningful changes such as a move, a new specialty, or updated practice details. Compare visibility, factual accuracy, review recency and themes, and AI citations across dated records. A shift in one result or one assistant’s answer is a point-in-time observation, not proof of a lasting ranking change.
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A review-monitoring or social-media management service may help collate reviews across platforms, but it is an optional workflow aid, not a guarantee of visibility. The ADA’s guidance notes that such tools can aggregate reviews. Google’s separate caution is that it does not evaluate third-party SEO services and that third-party tools lack its internal ranking data. Treat promises of guaranteed AI recommendations or privileged Google ranking insight skeptically unless the provider documents a legitimate, verifiable basis.
What the available review statistics do—and do not—show
The ADA’s reputation page reports that 84% of the public trust online reviews to help them make decisions, but the cited page does not state the original survey year. It also cites an ADA Health Policy Institute survey in which 88% of surveyed dentists reported receiving online patient reviews; the cited passage does not state that survey’s year. Neither figure should be read as a current prevalence estimate. The ADA discusses these figures in its guidance on protecting a dental practice’s reputation.
For physicians, the ACOG guidance on professional digital and social media use offers additional context on maintaining a professional online presence: ACOG Committee Opinion, 2019.
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