Key takeaways in this post about AI search:

  • ChatGPT tends to provide personalized, conversational responses, often favoring nationally recognized health systems or providing guidance on finding the best providers.
  • Google delivers more location-based results and relies heavily on established SEO practices.
  • Unlike Google, ChatGPT does not necessarily align its results with Google’s SERPs, often linking to broader landing pages rather than specific content pages.
  • Marketers should continue following SEO best practices while also adopting a more conversational tone in their content.
  • Keeping provider profiles updated on third-party platforms like Healthgrades and Zocdoc is crucial, as ChatGPT is increasingly pulling individual provider names from these sources.

AI is changing search and SEO, leaving many organizations scrambling to maintain, much less compete for, web traffic. ChatGPT, Perplexity and other search platforms are creeping in on Google’s search arena and affecting your lead generation. One of the biggest contenders is ChatGPT, which has more than 180 million users, compared to Google’s 276 million unique monthly visitors.

How do you land in ChatGPT’s results? Does ChatGPT use the same ranking criteria as Google? Do you need to change your content strategy? The experts at WG Content ran an experiment and created a case study to help answer these questions and more.

ChatGPT (GPT-4o) is an AI-based language model created by OpenAI that generates human-like, conversational answers. While it isn’t trained on the most current data, it can search the internet in real time. It takes the right prompt, but OpenAI’s SearchGPT will soon make that easier. The SearchGPT prototype, with a user interface similar to Perplexity AI, promises to streamline results with citations.

Consumers are turning to AI-first search because it’s streamlined. The results are conversational, digestible and personalized, too. That’s just the right combination for general healthcare queries. So our marketing minds wondered, “How do healthcare brands appear in ChatGPT?” We conducted a test to find out.

Our goal in this side-by-side test of ChatGPT versus Google search results was two-fold:

  1. Compare healthcare-related results from Google search versus ChatGPT (GPT-4o).
  2. Evaluate when brands feature in the results and identify patterns.

First, we defined our persona: a 50- to 60-year-old person looking for a healthcare specialist for a senior parent who was recently diagnosed with a health condition (breast cancer, congestive heart failure or stroke).

Next, we identified three service lines: breast cancer, cardiology and stroke rehabilitation. Our process was simple. We developed a list of broad-topic questions our persona would likely search. These prompts included variations of top-ranking keywords such as heart doctor, heart specialist and cardiologist. Then, we conducted parallel searches from IP addresses in Ohio, Illinois and Virginia.

Our healthcare search theories and results

Reliance on published rankings
Our test included questions like “Where can I find a good heart doctor?” Not specifying a search location, we expected Google and ChatGPT to return results related to top-rated health systems. ChatGPT took a national perspective, while Google generally served up local health systems.

  • Google leaned into our IP addresses and heavily populated search engine result pages (SERPs) with providers in our local areas. A few nationally top-ranked health systems showed up in SERPs. These national providers often had strong, established SEO and topic authority that likely drove their appearance in SERPs for all three IP locations.
  • ChatGPT didn’t take location into account unless specifically prompted. It seemed to home in on “top-ranked,” “the best,” and similar phrases in the prompt. ChatGPT then tended to either deliver results from nationally top-ranked health systems (based on U.S. News & World Report, Healthgrades, and similar ranking lists) or give guidance on what to look for to find the best provider. It advised us to look at recommendations from professional organizations and primary care providers and to review provider certifications and experience.

Correlation with page one SERPs

Google favors sites that demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). The same applies to generative search. We expected brands that rank high in Google SERPs to appear in ChatGPT, too. While some high-ranking brands appeared in ChatGPT, the citations did not align with Google SERPs.

  • Google presented organic links to specific content pages it deemed as the most relevant content related to the keywords. AI Overviews (AIOs) appeared often. They attempted to answer our questions directly within a limited word count. They also tried to predict our next step, suggesting follow-up links.
  • ChatGPT most often linked to service line or home landing pages, not specific content pages. These child pages didn’t necessarily rank high in Google SERPs. ChatGPT’s responses were succinct, though generally longer than Google’s AIOs, and sometimes offered recommendations and next steps.
SEO and generative search webinar from WG Content

Reference to health information websites

The majority of healthcare keywords trigger AI Overviews. And a recent study found that Healthline.com is among the most frequently linked websites in AIOs. We expected ChatGPT would also favor that healthcare media platform. Chat GPT claimed to have referenced several notable sources, but Healthline was absent from their list.

  • Google’s organic SERPs again tended to lean into sites with strong SEO, topic authority and keywords that aligned with the query. SERPs often were a mix of health system, professional medical association and healthcare media content, including relevant video media.
  • When prompted about its sources, ChatGPT consistently said it “referred to a variety of sources that provide comprehensive reviews and ratings based on patient experiences, expert opinions, and hospital affiliations.” These included Healthgrades, U.S. News & World Report, Castle Connolly Medical, Vitals and Zocdoc, as well as leading hospital websites and non-profit medical societies. Video content wasn’t included in ChatGPT results, although the prompts didn’t specifically request media.

List of provider profiles
“Who are the top-rated breast oncologists?” Given the number of public lists, profiles, rankings and reviews, we anticipated Google could generate a list of qualified physicians in response to this and similar questions. We didn’t predict the same for ChatGPT, but testing delivered unexpected results.

  • Google’s organic SERPs often presented U.S. News & World Report, Healthgrades and other ranking lists. Sometimes, SERPs included a top-ranked health system’s service line landing page. However, it could not directly deliver a specific list of provider names. Google AIOs provided particular names for some testers, but only sometimes. The providers listed didn’t necessarily relate to the tester’s location or qualifying keywords.
  • ChatGPT gave a handful of individual provider names, titles and their affiliated health system. Sometimes, it included a link. However, when we dug into the profiles of the recommended providers, we found issues. Often, the contact information was outdated (retired or no longer affiliated), or providers had no connection with the stated health system. ChatGPT also confused research faculty for clinical providers at times. Finally, it favored providers over the age of 60 — those with more publications, years of experience, etc., which AI considered better qualifications.
Screenshot of ChatGBT search answering a "who" questions for a provider.
Screenshot of ChatGBT search answering a “who” questions for a provider.
Screenshot of side-by-side comparison of Google and ChatGPT answering "Who is the best heart doctor?"
Side by side comparison of Google and ChatGPT answering “Who is the best heart doctor?”

A few findings stood out. Consumers are likely shifting from using Google for everything to ChatGPT because it offers:

  • A personal touch — ChatGPT seems to pick up on the user’s tone. It answered direct prompts directly. But emotional prompts received empathetic replies like, “I’m sorry to hear about your father’s diagnosis.”
Screenshot from ChatGBT AI search experiment
Example of a ChatGPT answer using personal touch.
  • Stream of consciousness —ChatGPT allowed us to quickly clarify our search intention and course correct when a response was off-track. These real-time modifications meant we didn’t need to start all over with a new query, unlike Google’s standalone results. We intentionally took the conversation in different directions — as a worried family member might — and GPT-4o remembered and kept up. This feature could also benefit healthcare consumers with low health or reading literacy.
Screenshot from ChatGBT search experiment
Screenshot of ChatGPT search example showing stream of consciousness.
Screenshot of ChatGBT example for healthcare search
Another screenshot of ChatGBT results showing stream of consciousness.
  • Conversation threads — Using Google, our test persona might bookmark their breast cancer research and share individual links with family members. Plus, users can now click a save button in certain AIOs to retrieve the same AIO result and links later. Using GPT-4o, we were able to continue the same conversation throughout the week in a single thread and then share the entire conversation.

Our comparative test revealed clear benefits to AI-first search for healthcare information. It also showed where we, as marketers, can improve to ensure we meet consumers there.

  • Follow SEO best practices, such as title tags, keywords, alt text, etc.
  • Give clear, concise answers in your content that ChatGPT and Google AIOs can readily use. Then, expand upon the answers with in-depth information that builds your topical authority. Content clusters are an ideal way to provide high-quality answers to follow-up questions.
  • Take a conversational tone, even in headlines. You should still include target keywords, but think about how you would pose questions and answers to a friend.
  • Don’t underestimate the value of updated provider profiles and rankings in third-party services like Healthgrades and Zocdoc. AI search tools like ChatGPT have demonstrated the ability to pull individual provider names, and their accuracy will only improve.

AI-first search tools like ChatGPT are shifting how users find healthcare information. Marketing strategies must evolve to remain competitive. Adopting a conversational tone, optimizing high-quality content and leveraging provider profiles are a few ways to keep your brand visible and relevant.

Ready to enhance your healthcare content strategy for the future of AI-first search? WG Content offers data-driven insights and content.

AEO strategy focuses on optimizing content to answer search queries. It’s an important part of SEO and if done properly, can help your organization appear in the answer box or featured snippet in search results pages and in other AI-first platforms. Embracing AEO is important for today’s content strategy and means researching and addressing common customer questions, optimizing for long-tail keywords and maintaining schema markup.

It’s important to maximize visibility is both search results. For Google, continue prioritizing traditional SEO tactics like optimizing for H-E-E-A-T (Healthcare, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), targeting specific keywords, and ensuring content is relevant and location-based. For ChatGPT, it’s essential to create content that is concise, conversational and authoritative.

AIOs are common for healthcare keywords. The concise nature of AIOs can also reduce click-through rates, as users may get the information they need without visiting your site. To mitigate this, healthcare organizations should focus on creating content that not only answers the initial query but also encourages further engagement, such as offering in-depth guides, patient stories or links to related topics. It’s also essential to ensure that your content is structured to be easily digestible by AI, which increases the likelihood of being included in AIOs.

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