Ask ChatGPT for the best dentist in your town and watch what it does. It hedges. It disclaims. It hands back three or four names that everybody already knows. It behaves less like a search engine and more like a hotel concierge who has been burned once and is never risking it again.

This trait explains everything about how AI recommends. These models are built to be risk-averse, and they are especially twitchy about healthcare. So they don't necessarily reward the best clinical dentist. They reward the practice they can be most confident about. The one whose name, address, phone, listings, reviews, and website all agree with each other, and whose name shows up on sites the practice doesn't own.

In this episode, Eric and Sara pull this apart and speak about what actually earns dental practices an AI mention and the handful of things wo ...