Insights · Aesthetics
How med spas get recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI
9 min read
AI assistants name the practices they can verify. When a patient asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews for the best med spa for Botox, the assistant reads web pages, Google Business Profile data, reviews, directories and forum threads. It then names the practices whose information is clear, consistent and specific to the procedure asked about. Med spas recommended by ChatGPT usually have detailed treatment pages, named and credentialed injectors, matching listings everywhere, and recent reviews that mention specific procedures. Nobody can guarantee a mention, but you control most of the inputs.
How AI assistants answer "best med spa for Botox near me"
An assistant does not keep a secret list of good med spas. It runs a search, reads what comes back, and writes a summary that names a few practices. Your job is to be easy to find, easy to understand and easy to confirm.
Google describes this in its documentation on AI features and your website. In short, AI Overviews and AI Mode link to pages that are already indexed and eligible to appear in regular Google results, and Google does not describe a separate technical checklist. Google also says these features may break one question into several related searches, which is why a single question like "where should I get lip filler" can pull in pages about price, safety, injectors and reviews all at once.
For local questions, Google's own framework still matters. Google's Business Profile help explains that local results are based mainly on relevance (how well a listing matches the search), distance (how far it is from the searcher) and prominence (how well known the business is, based on information from across the web such as reviews, links and directories). Those three factors explain a lot of what you see in AI answers about nearby practices.
One caution. OpenAI and Perplexity do not publish ranking formulas for local recommendations, and their behavior changes often. What follows is based on what each assistant visibly cites and on how search works generally, not on a guaranteed recipe.
Where the answers come from
Assistants stitch their answers together from six kinds of sources. Knowing which one is weak for your practice tells you where to start.
Your own website
This is the source you control completely, and it is usually the thinnest. A med spa site with one "Services" page listing twelve procedures in bullets gives an assistant almost nothing to quote. A page dedicated to lip filler, with what the procedure is, who it suits, the products used, who performs it, what it costs and what recovery looks like, gives it several facts to lift.
Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile (the listing that appears in Maps and the local results) feeds Google's AI answers directly, and other assistants often reference its data too. The primary category, the services listed, hours, photos, the description and your reviews all shape how Google matches you to "Botox near me." A practice listed only as "Beauty salon" or "Health spa" sends a weaker signal than one categorized and described as the medical aesthetic practice it is. Our guide to local SEO and Google Business Profile covers the setup in detail.
Review sites and directories
Assistants lean on third-party pages because those pages are not written by you. Google reviews, Yelp, RealSelf (especially for plastic surgeons), Healthgrades, the Better Business Bureau, local chamber listings and med spa "best of" lists all get read. When these sources agree on your name, address, phone number and services, the assistant can be confident in naming you. When they disagree, it may skip you or name a competitor.
Local press and Reddit
A feature in the local newspaper, a city magazine's "best of" list or a quote from your medical director in a news story gives assistants an independent reference. Reddit matters for a different reason. Google and OpenAI have both reported content partnerships with Reddit, and patients do ask "who did your filler?" in city subreddits. You cannot control those threads, and posing as a patient to seed them backfires and breaks platform rules. What you can do is be good enough that real patients mention you, and make sure your own pages answer the same questions people ask there.
What gets med spas recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI
Most of what you control comes down to four things. Each one gives an assistant a fact it can verify somewhere else.
Treatment pages with prices or price ranges
Patients asking AI about Botox or filler are almost always comparing cost, and assistants prefer pages that answer the question. A treatment page should state how you price (per unit for neuromodulators, per syringe for filler, per session for laser hair removal or microneedling) and show a real range or starting price. If exact pricing varies by injector or patient, say so and explain what drives it.
A strong procedure page covers, in plain language:
- What the procedure treats and what it does not
- Products used (Botox, Dysport, Juvederm, Restylane and so on)
- Typical price or range, and how pricing is set
- Who performs it, with name, license and training
- Downtime, risks and what the consult involves
- Questions patients commonly ask, answered briefly
This is the work of service and procedure content, and it is the highest-value place to spend effort. Surgeons can see the same principle at work in our post on SEO for plastic surgeons.
Injector credentials
For a medical procedure, assistants and Google both try to judge who is behind the advice and the injection. Give each injector a bio page with their full name, license type (MD, DO, NP, PA or RN, depending on your state), board certifications if any, years of injecting, training, and the name of your supervising or medical director where your state requires one. Use the same name and title on your site, your Google profile, your directory listings and your social profiles.
State rules on who may inject and who must supervise vary, so check your state medical board's current requirements before you publish anything. Plain, accurate credentials are also what a careful patient wants to see before booking a consult.
Consistent listings
Check your practice name, address, suite number, phone number, website and hours on every platform. Small differences, such as "Glow Aesthetics" in one place and "Glow Aesthetics Med Spa LLC" in another, or an old phone number on a directory, make it harder for an assistant to treat them as one business. Fix the biggest sources first: Google, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, Healthgrades, RealSelf and your state or city directories.
Reviews that mention specific procedures
Recent reviews matter because they describe what a patient actually experienced. A review that says "great experience" tells an assistant little. One that mentions lip filler, the injector by name and how natural it looked gives it something to match to a question about lip filler.
You cannot script reviews, and you should not try. Google's policies prohibit offering incentives for reviews. What you can do is ask every patient after a visit and make it easy with a direct link, and send a follow-up that gently suggests mentioning the procedure they had. Reply to reviews without confirming that the reviewer was a patient or naming a treatment, since privacy rules for health information apply to public replies.
A 15-minute test you can run today
Ask the assistants the way a patient would, and write down what comes back. Use a logged-out browser or a private window so your results are not shaped by your search history.
- Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google (in AI Mode or the AI Overview that appears) each of these: "best med spa for Botox near me," "where should I get lip filler in [your city]," and "who are the most experienced injectors in [your city]."
- Record whether you are named, which competitors are named, and which sources are cited next to the answer.
- Click every cited source. Is it your site, your Google profile, a directory, a review site, a news article or a Reddit thread?
- Ask a follow-up about you: "Is [your practice] good for [procedure]? What does it cost?" and check whether the answer is accurate.
- Repeat the test in a week and again in a month. Answers vary from one run to the next, so look for patterns, not single results.
Read the results by pattern:
| What you see | Likely gap | First fix |
|---|---|---|
| Competitors named, you are missing | Weak procedure pages or few specific reviews | Build dedicated pages, collect procedure reviews |
| You are named but with wrong price or hours | Inconsistent or outdated listings | Correct your profile and directories |
| Cited sources are all directories | Assistants lack your own content | Publish detailed pages with credentials |
| Cited sources are Reddit threads | Patients discuss others, not you | Improve patient experience and your public answers |
| Nobody local is named | Query too broad or little local content | Try more specific procedure and neighborhood queries |
If you would rather have someone do this across all the assistants and report what they find, SEOS includes it in the free visibility audit.
What to expect on timing
Page and listing fixes can be picked up in days to a few weeks, depending on how often search engines revisit your site. Review volume and outside mentions take months to build, and that is the part that tends to separate practices in a crowded city. Because assistants do not publish how they rank, treat any firm promise of an AI placement as a red flag.
This is why AI search optimization is best treated as an extension of good local SEO, not a separate trick. If you want the foundation first, start with what local SEO is, then work through the four items above. Practices that compete for med spa patients and plastic surgery consults benefit from the same groundwork.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT or Perplexity?
No. Neither assistant offers a way to buy placement in organic answers. Ads are a separate product, and they are labeled. The practical route is to make your information clear and verifiable on the sources the assistants read.
Do Google AI Overviews use different rules than normal Google search?
Mostly the same ones. Google says AI features draw on pages that are indexed and eligible to appear in Search, so strong pages and a well-maintained Business Profile help in both. AI answers may combine several related searches, so thorough procedure pages tend to do better than thin ones.
Do I need to publish prices to be recommended?
Not strictly, but patients ask about cost constantly, and an assistant can only quote what it can find. If you do not publish pricing, it may repeat a competitor's price or a vague average. A starting price or range with a short explanation of what changes it is usually enough.
How often should I run the test?
Monthly is plenty. Assistants give different answers from one run to the next, so one query tells you little. Keep a simple spreadsheet of the same questions and watch whether your name, your credentials and your prices show up more accurately over time.