When a patient asks ChatGPT "who is the best pelvic floor physiotherapist on the Gold Coast" — whose name appears? AI search optimisation determines the answer. Thinkbig builds the content infrastructure that gets health practices cited.
For most of the internet era, search meant Google. You ranked in the blue links or you didn't rank at all. That model produced a clear, well-understood playbook: keyword research, on-page optimisation, backlinks, technical health.
That playbook still matters. But it is no longer the whole game.
AI assistants — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot — now answer complex health questions directly, citing specific practitioners and practices as authoritative sources. When a patient asks "what are the best treatment options for endometriosis in Australia" or "how do I find a sports dietitian after ACL surgery", these tools provide an answer and often recommend specific practitioners.
The criteria for appearing in those answers is different from traditional SEO. It is not primarily about backlinks or page authority. It is about whether your content demonstrates clear expertise on a specific topic, whether it is structured in a way AI systems can parse and summarise, and whether your entity — your name, your practice — is clearly associated with a particular area of expertise across the web.
Patients increasingly treat AI tools as a first-line research resource for health decisions — particularly for sensitive or complex conditions where they want thorough, unfiltered information before speaking to anyone. The patient researching PCOS management, looking for a pelvic health physiotherapist, or trying to understand whether they need a referral to a specialist — these patients are consulting AI tools before they consult Google.
Practices that appear as cited sources in these answers have a compounding advantage. Every time a patient gets a recommendation from an AI tool, it carries implicit authority that a traditional Google ad or organic ranking does not. It signals that an independent, sophisticated system has assessed your expertise and found it credible.
Practices that are not building for AI search are already falling behind. The content infrastructure required to earn citations takes time to build — the earlier you start, the larger the advantage.
Each AI search platform has a different model for citing sources. We build for all four that matter for health practice discovery in Australia.
Google's AI-generated answer blocks now appear above organic results for many health queries. Being cited here requires structured content that directly answers specific questions in a Google-readable format.
Patients use conversational AI tools to research conditions and find practitioners. Appearing in these answers requires entity recognition — your practice needs to be clearly associated with specific expertise across multiple web sources.
Perplexity is used by higher-education patients doing systematic research. It cites specific URLs for its answers — making it one of the most direct AI traffic sources when your content is structured correctly.
Microsoft's AI assistant surfaces in Windows, Edge, and mobile voice search. The citation criteria overlaps with Bing's organic algorithm — structured data and authority signals both matter.
We run systematic queries across all four platforms to understand what AI currently says about your practice and specialty. We identify gaps, errors, and missed citation opportunities.
We build a consistent entity signal across your website, directories, and social profiles. AI systems need to be able to identify your practice as a distinct, trusted entity associated with specific expertise.
We produce long-form, question-structured content for your specialty's highest-value queries. Each piece is optimised for AI extraction — clear topic focus, direct answers, structured formatting.
We place practitioner-authored content and citations across authoritative third-party platforms — giving AI systems evidence that your expertise is recognised beyond your own website.
Monthly reporting on where your practice appears in AI responses, what is being said, and how citation performance evolves over time. We adjust the strategy based on what the data shows.
We run a free AI visibility check — testing what ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI say when asked about your specialty and your practice. You get the findings on a 20-minute call.