How to Check if AI Recommends Your Practice: The Webpatch AI Visibility CheckA five-step test any practice can run in an hour, with the crawler names to look for and a scorecard to keep.

To check if AI recommends your practice, ask the main AI tools the questions your patients ask and record whether your practice is named, linked, and described correctly. We call this process the Webpatch AI Visibility Check. It has five steps and takes about an hour. A practice manager can run it without technical help.

The Webpatch AI Visibility Check at a glance

1. 1

   Write ten patient prompts

   Write the questions a patient in your town would ask an AI tool about your specialty.

2. 2

   Run them in four AI tools

   Use ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and Claude. Start a new chat for each prompt.

3. 3

   Score each answer

   Record three things: named, linked, and accurate. Note which competitors appear.

4. 4

   Check crawler access

   Open your robots.txt file and confirm that the AI search crawlers are not blocked.

5. 5

   Fix and repeat monthly

   Fix the gaps the scorecard shows. Run the same ten prompts again next month.

Why should a practice check its AI visibility?

A practice should check because patients now ask AI before they book. In a KFF poll of 1,343 US adults fielded from February 24 to March 2, 2026, 32% had used AI tools for health information or advice in the past year. Among those users, 41% said a major reason was to look up information before deciding whether to see a provider.

Search rankings do not tell you what an AI tool says. The only way to know is to ask it.

Step 1: Which prompts should you test?

Test ten prompts across four types. Replace the specialty, town, and practice name with your own.

Write the prompts the way a patient talks. Long questions matter. In a WebFX study of 130,070 US health searches, 73.9% of searches with seven or more words showed a Google AI Overview.

Step 2: Where should you run the prompts?

Run each prompt in four tools: ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and Claude. Follow three rules so the test is fair.

• Start a new chat for every prompt. Earlier messages change later answers.
• Do not name your practice in the first three prompt types. You want to see whether the tool names you unprompted.
• Run each prompt twice. AI answers can differ from one run to the next. Record both.

Step 3: How do you score an answer?

Score the first run of each prompt on three yes-or-no questions. Ten prompts in four tools give 40 scored answers and a top score of 120. Use the second run to note where the answer changed.

Also write down two things for each answer: which other practices the tool named, and which websites it cited. Those two lists show who the tool trusts in your town today.

Step 4: Can AI crawlers reach your website?

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for these crawler names. A "Disallow: /" line under any of them blocks that tool's search.

Training crawlers are separate. GPTBot and ClaudeBot collect content for model training. A practice can block those and still allow the search crawlers above. OpenAI states that its settings are independent.

Step 5: What do you fix after the check?

Match each scorecard gap to a fix.

The first fix has data behind it. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that branded web mentions had the strongest correlation with visibility in Google AI Overviews, at 0.664. Number of site pages had the weakest, at 0.170. Our guide to AEO for healthcare covers each fix in detail.

How often should you run the check?

Run it once a month with the same ten prompts. Keep each month's score in one spreadsheet. The trend matters more than any single score. A rising score means the fixes are working. A flat score after three months means the practice needs more mentions on other websites, not more pages of its own.

How Webpatch helps

Webpatch is a technology company that works with healthcare practices. We build websites and manage their security, HIPAA compliance, SEO, and AEO. If you want us to run the Webpatch AI Visibility Check for your practice, contact Webpatch.

This article is for education only. It is not legal advice and has no legal standing. Have a qualified professional review your situation before you act.