Why Your Practice Ranks Well But Phones Aren't Ringing

Traffic looks stable, maybe even growing. Rankings for your key terms haven't dropped. Your website is technically sound. But new patient inquiries have declined – and you can't figure out why.

You might have noticed patients mentioning they "asked ChatGPT" or "saw you in the Google summary." Some say they found you but decided to call someone else. The disconnect between your search visibility and actual patient volume is real, and it's affecting practices across every specialty.

The search landscape has fundamentally shifted in the past two years. Google now displays AI-generated summaries at the top of many healthcare searches, answering patient questions before they scroll to your website.^[1] These AI Overviews appeared in roughly 16% of all searches by late 2025, with health-related queries showing even higher rates.^[2]

Simultaneously, nearly 60% of all Google searches now end without a click to any website.^[3] Users get their answer directly from the search page – from featured snippets, knowledge panels, local packs, or AI summaries – and never visit your site.

Meanwhile, millions of patients have started using ChatGPT and other AI tools for healthcare research. OpenAI reports over 230 million people globally ask health-related questions on ChatGPT every week,^[4] often before or instead of traditional Google searches. When these AI tools recommend providers, they cite specific practices – and if you're not among them, patients don't know you exist.

Traditional SEO was built for a different era. It optimized for "10 blue links" – get to page one, earn the click, convert on your website. That model assumed searchers would click through to evaluate options.

Today, the evaluation happens before the click. Patients read the AI summary. They scan the knowledge panel. They check the local pack ratings. By the time they decide to call anyone, they've already narrowed their choice – often to whoever Google or ChatGPT presented as the answer.

Ranking well for keywords no longer guarantees visibility where decisions are made. Your website might be technically excellent and rank position three, but if you're not in the AI summary or cited by ChatGPT, an increasing share of patients will never consider you.

This isn't a failure of your SEO strategy. It's a structural change in how search works. The tactics that built your rankings over the past decade weren't designed for AI-mediated discovery.

Closing the gap between rankings and patients requires a different approach to visibility – one that optimizes not just for search engines, but for the AI systems that increasingly mediate patient discovery.

This means structuring your practice's information so AI can understand who you are, what you treat, and why you're credible. It means building the kind of authoritative, well-organized web presence that both Google's AI Overviews and conversational AI tools can cite.

The practices that adapt will capture the patients searching in new ways. The ones that don't will watch traffic metrics while their phones stay quiet.