What You’ll Learn:

Table of Contents

• The Shift Nobody Saw Coming
• Why Traditional SEO Isn’t Enough Anymore
• The Surprising Sources AI Trusts
• The Ad Cost Crisis
• What AI Is Looking For (And How to Give It)
• Why This Isn’t DIY Territory Anymore
• The Path Forward
• FAQ

The End of Traditional SEO? How AI Is Rewriting the Rules for Dental Marketing

The Shift Nobody Saw Coming

When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, most people treated it as a novelty. A fun way to talk to a computer. But consumers quickly realized something important: AI could answer their questions better than traditional search.

“I just want the answer,” Lefler said, capturing the consumer mindset. “I don’t want to click on anything. Just give me the freaking answer that I want.”

Google noticed. When about 1% of their search traffic migrated to ChatGPT, it represented billions in potential lost ad revenue. Google’s response was to integrate AI into their search results through Google Gemini and AI Overviews. Now, when you search for something on Google, an AI-generated answer often appears at the very top of the page, above the ads, above the map pack, above everything else.

The result? Around 60% of Google searches now end without a single click. Users get their answer from the AI overview and move on.

For dental practices, this creates a fundamental problem. If patients aren’t clicking on search results, how do they find you?

Why Traditional SEO Isn’t Enough Anymore

Traditional SEO worked on a fairly simple principle. Match the words on your website to the words people type into search engines. If someone searched “dental implants Phoenix Arizona,” you needed that exact phrase scattered throughout your website and blog posts. Google’s algorithm would match the search query to your content and rank you accordingly.

AI search works completely differently.

“AI takes that search phrase and breaks it up,” Lefler explained. “It’s looking for context and sentiment and nuance because it understands human language.”

When a patient uses AI to find a dentist, they’re not typing short keyword phrases anymore. They’re speaking naturally, often using voice search: “Hey ChatGPT, I’m in Phoenix, Arizona. I need a dental implant. I have Delta Dental insurance and I need somebody that’s available until 7 p.m. at night.”

The AI takes this conversational query, breaks it into contextual components, then fans out across the internet looking for content that directly answers the question. But the crucial difference is that it’s not looking for entire websites or complete blog posts. It’s looking for paragraphs of information that specifically address what the patient asked.

“It grabs a paragraph from your website, from a blog post that you wrote six months ago about dental implants,” Lefler said. “It grabs a paragraph of copy from an ADA article. It goes to the dental implantology association and finds an article there. It’s grabbing a chunk here and a chunk there and assimilating it all together to produce the response.”

The Surprising Sources AI Trusts

When marketers started analyzing where AI was pulling its information from, they found some unexpected patterns. One source appeared in 30 to 50% of AI-generated results: Reddit.

“I thought Reddit was like the gutter of the internet,” Lefler admitted. “But apparently ChatGPT sees it as a valuable source, a reputable source for sentiment and context.”

Why would AI trust Reddit? The platform does a good job of filtering spam. Accounts are fairly legitimate, and the upvote/downvote system creates a form of community validation. When content gets upvoted, it signals to AI that real humans found it valuable.

This doesn’t mean AI relies solely on Reddit. A typical AI response might pull from 10 to 15 different citations: your dental practice website, an ADA article, content from dental specialty associations, local business directories, and yes, relevant Reddit discussions. The AI synthesizes all of this to create its response.

For dental practices, this means your online presence needs to extend beyond just your website. Where else is your practice being discussed? What are patients saying on various platforms? Is your practice mentioned in local community forums or directories?

The Ad Cost Crisis

The shift to AI search has created a painful side effect for dental practices relying on Google Ads: costs have doubled or even tripled in many markets.

The math is simple but brutal. When AI overviews sit at the top of search results, fewer people scroll down to the ads. With fewer people seeing ads, there’s less ad inventory available. But the number of advertisers hasn’t decreased. High demand plus low supply equals skyrocketing prices.

“If you used to spend $2,000 a month on ads, you’re spending four for the same number of clicks,” Lefler explained. “Your ad costs are going up.”

This creates a strategic dilemma for dental practices. Google Ads have always been the “quick fix” option for marketing. Need patients fast? Run ads. But quick has always come with a premium price tag. Lefler estimates ads cost about five times more than other marketing approaches like SEO.

Now that premium is getting even steeper, while the return is shrinking. Practices that have relied heavily on ads are facing a reckoning.

What AI Is Looking For (And How to Give It)

So what does it take to get AI to recommend your practice? Marketers are still figuring this out, but patterns are emerging.

“When we look at the content that AI is referencing, it’s written differently,” Lefler observed. “There is a structure that we can see right now. People are figuring it out.”

The good news is that traditional SEO tactics aren’t going away. Your website still needs to be fast. Your content still needs to be high quality. Technical elements like schema markup still matter. But on top of all that, content needs to be structured in a way that AI can easily extract and reference.

Here’s what seems to work:

• Direct answers to specific questions. Instead of writing general content about dental implants, create content that directly answers questions like “How much do dental implants cost in [your city]?” or “What’s the recovery time for dental implant surgery?”
• Paragraph-level optimization. Since AI extracts paragraphs rather than entire pages, each paragraph should be able to stand alone as a useful piece of information.
• Demonstrated expertise. AI seems to favor content that demonstrates real expertise. This might include specific details, professional credentials, or unique insights that generic content wouldn’t have.
• Local context. For dental practices, local relevance matters enormously. Content should clearly establish your geographic service area and local expertise.
• Multi-platform presence. Your practice needs to be mentioned and discussed across multiple reputable platforms, not just your own website.

Why This Isn’t DIY Territory Anymore

A few years ago, Lefler might have told dentists they could handle their own marketing internally. Not anymore.

“It’s too freaking complicated,” he said bluntly. “If you want to be found online, you have to build systems to do the research and then deliver the product correctly. It requires effort and labor.”

The challenge isn’t just that AI search is new. It’s that everything is changing simultaneously. Search algorithms update constantly. AI capabilities improve monthly. Consumer behavior shifts as people adopt new tools. Staying on top of all these changes while running a dental practice is essentially impossible.

“I am studying this stuff all day long and I can’t keep up with all of the innovation,” Lefler admitted. “It’s like impossible to stay on top of it. So a dentist is not going to. It’s impossible. It’s just not possible.”

This is where working with a dental-specific marketing company becomes essential. Generic marketing agencies might understand SEO in theory, but they won’t understand the nuances of how patients search for dental care, what makes dental practices credible to AI, or how to compete in local dental markets.

The Path Forward

Despite all the upheaval, Lefler sees opportunity for practices willing to adapt.

The practices that thrive will be those that invest in building genuine online authority. This means consistent content creation, active reputation management, and presence across multiple platforms. It means thinking about how AI understands and evaluates your practice, not just how Google’s traditional algorithm ranks you.

Most importantly, it means recognizing that SEO is a long-term investment, not a quick fix. Building the kind of digital credibility that AI trusts takes time. Lefler estimates at least a year to build a solid foundation. But once that foundation exists, it’s remarkably durable.

“Once you’ve built it, it’s hard to destroy it,” Lefler explained. “You rise and then you just maintain. The cost to get there is a fraction of the cost for ads.”

For practices that have been riding the ad spend treadmill, constantly paying for each new patient, this represents a chance to build something more sustainable. Yes, it requires patience. Yes, it requires investment. But in a world where ad costs keep climbing and AI continues reshaping search, building genuine authority is the only strategy that makes long-term sense.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Author: Megan Nielsen is an SEO strategist and the Grand Overlord of copywriting at My Social Practice. My Social Practice is a dental marketing company that offers a full suite of dental marketing services to thousands of dental practices throughout the United States and Canada.