Why Dental Clinic Reviews Are Showing Up in Google’s AI Overviews - Here's How Dentists Can Stay in Control
Google’s new AI Overviews are changing how people find and evaluate dental clinics online. When patients search for reviews, Google’s AI may now generate a summary highlighting what people are saying — often before a user even clicks on a website.
For dental practices, this shift makes it more important than ever to ensure that the right information is visible and accurate.
What Triggers an AI Overview?
Through extensive testing, we identified several key factors that determine when and how Google’s AI generates an overview for a clinic’s reviews.
1. AI Overviews Primarily Get Information From Indexed Review Pages
AI overviews are most likely to appear when a clinic’s website includes a publicly visible, indexed review or testimonial page. Indexing is a fancy way of saying that Google has added the page to its database. When pages are properly indexed by Google, the AI can read and summarize them — often highlighting snippets directly from that content.
2. Third-Party Review Platforms Also Contribute
Google’s AI also references third-party review platforms like Facebook, Yelp, and Healthgrades. Google draws on these as a secondary source or if no review pages exist on the site, then Google looks to these sources. However, this can mean less control over how your brand is represented. For example, if a 1-star review is posted to Healthgrades.com it can potentially show up in the AI Overview if you’re not providing better quality reviews for Google to choose from..
3. Google Business Profile Reviews Aren’t Included
Interestingly, none of the AI-generated overviews we analyzed used content directly from Google Business Profile reviews. This suggests Google’s AI may rely more on publicly indexed web content and less on its own proprietary review data. This will likely change over time as Google continues to make updates to the AI Overview.
4. Missing Review Pages Lead to Inconsistent Results
In cases where a clinic lacks a dedicated review page, AI overviews can become inconsistent — sometimes pulling irrelevant or inaccurate information from unrelated sources. This reinforces how important it is to have a structured, optimized, and indexable review page on your site.
What We’re Doing to Help Our Clients
To ensure our clients maintain control over how their reputation appears in Google’s AI results, we’ve implemented dedicated, indexable review pages across their websites.
Each page is designed to:
- Highlight authentic patient feedback in a structured, trustworthy format
- Provide Google’s AI with accurate, high-quality information
- Reduce reliance on third-party platforms that may misrepresent or dilute your brand
By doing this, we’re helping dental clinics ensure that AI-generated overviews reflect genuine patient experiences — not random or mismatched online content.
This strategy improves visibility, strengthens credibility, and helps our clients showcase all the good work they're doing in their clinic and community both on their website and in the AI Overviews.
Take Control of Your Online Visibility
At Optio Publishing, we specialize in SEO strategies for dental clinics that go beyond rankings — helping your practice appear accurately across all of Google’s evolving search features, including AI Overviews.
Learn more about our SEO Services.