We build therapist websites and sell visibility plans that include a quarterly check of what AI tools say about a practice, so we have an interest in this topic. To keep the guide fair, every statement about how an assistant works comes from that company’s own documentation (checked October 23, 2026), we promise no result, and where the documentation says nothing on a point we say so. This guide goes deeper on one part of our SEO for therapists guide.
Can anyone make ChatGPT or Google’s AI mention my practice?
No. Each company says in its own words that appearing is not assured. Google: “Indexing and serving isn’t guaranteed.”1 OpenAI, about ChatGPT search: “Placement is not guaranteed.”2 Microsoft’s Bing guidelines say that GEO, short for generative engine optimization, “does not guarantee grounding or citations in AI experiences.”3 Google defines grounding as a technique that retrieves up-to-date web pages and uses them to generate a response.4
That leaves the work you can do: make your practice easy to find, read and describe correctly, then check what comes back. The rest of this guide shows how.
How does each assistant pick its sources?
Each company describes it a little differently, and the pages we read do not give a full list of factors. This table keeps to what those pages say.
| Assistant | What its documentation says | What that leaves for you |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | A page must be “indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet.” Google adds: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.”1 Google’s July 2026 guide adds that a site must be “included in Search generative AI features in Search Console,” which is the default setting.410 | Let Google crawl and index your pages and show snippets. Keep your Business Profile information up to date.1 In Search Console, check that the Search generative AI control still includes your site.10 |
| ChatGPT search | ChatGPT “ranks search results using multiple factors.” To make a site eligible, “allow OAI-Searchbot to crawl the site.” It “sometimes partners with other search providers” and typically rewrites your question into targeted queries.2 | Allow OAI-SearchBot. Name your city and service area in plain words, because ChatGPT may add a general location to the search it runs.2 |
| Copilot and Bing | “Bing and Copilot search experiences rely on the same core crawling, indexing, and ranking foundation as traditional search.” Pages “focused on a primary topic are more likely to be selected for grounding results.”3 | One main topic per page, a clear title and description, and the same names everywhere. |
| Perplexity | “PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity.”5 The page does not say how Perplexity chooses among sources. | Allow PerplexityBot if you want to appear.5 |
Two things stand out. Google says there is nothing special to do beyond SEO: “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.”4 And Microsoft says Bing and Copilot build on the same foundation as its ordinary search. So the basics in our SEO for therapists guide come first.
Which facts should match everywhere my practice is listed?
Your name, license line, location, contact details, fees and availability. In our view, when two pages disagree about a fee or an opening, an assistant has no reliable way to tell which one is current, so the safe move is to make them agree. Bing’s guidelines ask you to “Use clear and consistent naming for people, organizations, products, and locations.”3 Google lists “Making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page.”1
| Fact | Keep it identical on | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Practice and clinician name | Your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business, directories, social bios | Choose one spelling, with or without credentials, and use it everywhere. |
| License title and number | Your website and every profile or directory that shows it | Your board sets the wording. For California, see our guide to the 2026 advertising rule. |
| Address or service area, and the states where you see clients by telehealth | The same places | Who can have a Business Profile depends on how you see clients: our local SEO guide. |
| Phone, email and booking link | The same places | Use one primary contact and the same wording. |
| Fees, sliding-scale spots and insurance | The same places | See should therapists list fees on their website. |
| Whether you are taking new clients | The same places | When it changes, change it everywhere in the same week. |
| Specialties, ages and session format (in person, online or both) | Your service pages and profiles | Say it the same way on each page. |
Microsoft’s announcement of its AI reporting says businesses can register with Bing Places for Business “to help ensure that key details such as address, hours, and contact information remain current and eligible for inclusion in AI-generated responses.”6
How do I check what each assistant says about my practice?
Ask the same five requests three times each, in each assistant you care about, and write down every answer. That is 15 answers per assistant. One answer proves little: Google says its results can differ with “time, context, or personalized results,”7 and OpenAI says ChatGPT search typically rewrites your question and may use saved memories when it does.2
- Write five requests, one sentence each. Combine what a future client would combine: a concern or specialty, a place, a payment need and a format. Use only public information. Here are templates to adapt:
- “Therapist for [what you treat] in [city, state] who takes [insurance] or offers a sliding scale.”
- “Therapist in [city] who sees [age group] for [concern] and has evening appointments.”
- “Does [practice name] see clients in [state] by telehealth?”
- “What does [practice name] charge for a session, and does it take [insurance]?”
- “Is [practice name] accepting new clients?”
- Include your city or postal code in the request. OpenAI’s help page lists this under “Improve local search results.”2
- Start a new chat or search for every run. OpenAI says that if memory is enabled, ChatGPT “may use relevant saved memories when rewriting a search query.”2
- Run each request three times in each assistant: ChatGPT with search, Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode), Copilot and Perplexity. Google says AI Overviews “often don’t trigger,”1 so on some runs you may see none. Log those as “no AI Overview.”
- Count, then check facts. “Named in 2 of 3” is a result. One lucky answer is not. Check each fact the assistant states (fee, address, license, telehealth states) against your website, and write down what is wrong.
Copy this log and fill one row per assistant for each request:
| Request | Assistant | Date | Runs that named you | Page it cited | Anything wrong |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ChatGPT | [date] | _ of 3 | [page address] | [fee, address, license, availability] |
| 1 | Google AI Overview or AI Mode | [date] | _ of 3, or “no AI Overview” | [page address] | [note] |
| 1 | Copilot | [date] | _ of 3 | [page address] | [note] |
| 1 | Perplexity | [date] | _ of 3 | [page address] | [note] |
| 2 to 5 | Repeat the same four rows for each request. | ||||
This is a method. We have not run it for this guide, and we don’t claim what any practice will see.
What should I do if an assistant gets my practice wrong?
Start with the page it relied on. OpenAI’s help page tells users: “Open a cited source to check that it supports the answer.”2 It also says that if a result looks wrong, you can ask ChatGPT to search again using “a specific source, date, or location.”
- Find which page or profile holds the wrong fact: your website, a directory, an old listing.
- Correct it at the source, and make sure your own website states the right fact plainly in one place.
- Repeat the same request in a new chat after some days. Google says crawling “can take anywhere from several days to several months,” depending on how often it decides a page needs refreshing.1
- We did not find a published way to ask an assistant to change how it describes a practice, so the sources are the lever you have.
- Don’t buy or invent mentions. Google says seeking inauthentic “mentions” across the web “isn’t as helpful as it might seem.”4
Should I allow or block the AI crawlers?
If you want to appear in ChatGPT search answers, allow OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says sites that opt out of it “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links.”8 Training is a separate setting: a site can “allow OAI-SearchBot in order to appear in search results while disallowing GPTBot.”8
| Crawler | What the company says it is for | Note on robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI) | For search: “used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features.”8 | OpenAI says “it can take ~24 hours from a site’s robots.txt update for our systems to adjust.”8 |
| GPTBot (OpenAI) | Crawls “content that may be used in training our generative AI foundation models.”8 | Disallowing it “indicates a site’s content should not be used in training generative AI foundation models.”8 |
| ChatGPT-User (OpenAI) | Certain user actions in ChatGPT. | “Because these actions are initiated by a user, robots.txt rules may not apply.”8 |
| PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User | PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in Perplexity search results and “is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.”5 | Perplexity-User “generally ignores robots.txt rules” because a person requested the fetch.5 |
| Googlebot (Google Search, AI Overviews, AI Mode) | Google says robots.txt directives for Googlebot control how your site is crawled for Search, and snippet controls such as nosnippet limit what is shown from your pages.1 | Google-Extended is for limiting “AI training and grounding in some of Google’s other systems.”1 |
| Bingbot (Bing, Copilot) | Bing’s guidelines say to avoid “Blocking Bingbot in your robots.txt file.”3 | “NOARCHIVE prevents content from being used in Copilot responses and grounding results.”3 |
Allowing or blocking any of them is your decision. OpenAI also asks site owners to confirm that “the website host or content delivery network allows traffic from OpenAI’s published searchbot IP addresses,”2 so ask whoever hosts your site whether it blocks these crawlers.
Google has one more setting that is not a crawler rule. Since August 31, 2026, Search Console has a “Search generative AI control.” Its default is to include your site. If you choose to exclude it, Google says, “You won’t receive any traffic or impressions from these features.”10 The control does not affect AI training, which Google-Extended handles.10 If you have never opened that setting, it is worth a look.
Do llms.txt files, special schema or GEO services help?
For Google, no. Its guide says: “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add.”1 On llms.txt files, it adds that creating them “will neither harm nor help your site’s visibility or rankings in Google Search, as Google Search ignores them.”4
Google also warns: “No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems.”4 So when a service promises to get you into AI answers, ask what it will do and how you would check it. Our own answer to “Can you make AI recommend my practice?” is no. We improve your public information, then check an agreed sample of answers for mentions, links and accuracy, and the platforms decide which sources to use.
How can I see whether AI features show my site at all?
Google’s Search Console has a Generative AI performance report, and Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance dashboard. As of August 31, 2026, Google says it has rolled the report out to all websites, and the report includes impressions for AI Overviews and AI Mode.9 If you don’t see it, “This usually happens when your site hasn’t received enough impressions in generative AI features on Google Search.” Google adds that it may also be because you excluded your site in the Search generative AI control.9
Microsoft announced AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools as a public preview in February 2026.6 Its page-level figures show citation activity, and Microsoft says they do not show “page importance, ranking, or placement.”6 For what studies say about clicks from AI Overviews, see our guide on AI Overviews and clicks.
Questions therapists also ask
Why doesn’t an AI Overview appear when I search for my practice?
Google says AI Overviews “are only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search, and as such, often don’t trigger.”1 Not seeing one does not point to a problem with your site. Log it as “no AI Overview” and move on.
Does my Google Business Profile affect what AI says about me?
Google lists keeping Business Profile information up to date among its recommendations for AI features. Its optimization guide says Business Profiles “can help your products and services to be visible in both AI responses and other Google Search results.”4 Our local SEO guide covers who can have a profile, including telehealth-only practices.
Do directory profiles such as Psychology Today count?
None of the assistant documentation we read names therapist directories as a source. Assistants search the public web, so we treat a directory profile as one more page that has to match your website. If one carries an old fee or address, correct it there.
Should I write a page for every way someone might ask?
No. Google says it “might be tempting to create separate content for every possible variation of how people might search,” but doing so “primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses in Google Search violates Google’s scaled content abuse spam policy.”4 One page for each service you actually offer is the safer unit. Our guide on what Google says about AI-written content covers that policy.
How often should I run the test?
This is our judgment, not a rule from any platform: run it after you change a fee, location, license line or availability, and then about once a quarter. Repeat the same requests so you can compare. Platforms change, so keep the dates in your log.
Where to start
Open your website, your Business Profile and each directory profile, and fix anything that disagrees using the fact table above. Then run the five-request test once and keep the log. If you would rather have it done for you, our Visibility plan ($349 a month, or $279 a month billed annually) includes a quarterly check of what AI tools say about you: we ask ChatGPT, Google’s AI and others the questions your future clients ask, and check whether they mention you and get your details right. We don’t promise rankings or AI recommendations. Find the plan that fits your practice.
This guide is general information about products that change often, so check the linked pages before you act. Your licensing board sets the rules for how you describe your credentials, and this guide is not legal advice.