Healthcare SEO Agency for Google and AI Search

Google's rater guidelines name health and safety as a Your Money or Your Life topic, where accuracy and agreement with expert consensus matter most. Google says people ask Search more than a billion health questions a day, and it has expanded AI Overviews to thousands more health topics while holding them to a high bar for clinical accuracy.

That combination shapes the work. The sources that win are the ones that are clearly accurate, clearly reviewed and clearly accountable. Marketing claims without evidence do not get quoted.

We asked ChatGPT and Google the same 25 patient questions on September 26, 2026, from choosing a primary care doctor to comparing telehealth services. Google showed an AI Overview on 22 of them. ChatGPT leaned on government sources: 17 of its 52 cited sites were .gov health sites or the NHS. Beyond those, its citations were spread thinly across individual health systems and directories.

Google's side looked different again: YouTube was linked in 10 of its AI Overviews, and major health systems such as Mayo Clinic (5 questions) and Cleveland Clinic (4) ranked in the top ten. Only 12% of ChatGPT's cited sites also appeared in Google's Overview for the same question. See the full dataset.

Healthcare marketing measurement has its own constraints, and we plan around them from day one:

• Tracking on logged-in pages: HHS guidance says tracking technologies on authenticated pages such as patient portals generally have access to protected health information, and vendors that receive it need a business associate agreement.
• Public pages: on June 20, 2024, a federal court in American Hospital Association v. Becerra vacated the part of that guidance that treated an IP address plus a visit to a public health page as protected information. HHS dropped its appeal in September 2024. The rest of the guidance still stands, and public pages that collect health details, such as booking forms, need care.
• Health apps outside HIPAA: the FTC's updated Health Breach Notification Rule (effective July 29, 2024) covers health apps and similar products, and treats unauthorized disclosure as a breach.

None of this stops good SEO. It means measuring visibility with methods that do not depend on tracking patients, which is how our research works anyway: we measure the answers, not the people asking.

What makes healthcare SEO different?

Health is the clearest Your Money or Your Life topic in Google's rater guidelines, so accuracy and trust decide everything. On top of that, tracking and privacy rules limit what you can measure, and AI answers lean heavily on government and major medical sources.

Where does ChatGPT get its health information?

In our snapshot of 25 patient questions, 17 of the 52 sites ChatGPT cited were government health sites such as MedlinePlus, NIH, CMS, FDA and HealthCare.gov, or the UK's NHS. No single hospital or directory dominated, which leaves room for providers with clear, well-sourced pages.

Can we use tracking pixels on our website?

Carefully, and with your privacy counsel. HHS guidance says tracking tools on logged-in pages such as patient portals generally have access to protected health information. A 2024 court ruling vacated part of that guidance for public pages, but the rest still stands. We plan measurement around those limits.

Do you write medical content?

We plan and structure it, and we work with your clinicians or medical reviewers, who own the facts. Health pages should carry named, qualified reviewers. We do not publish medical claims without them.

• Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines (September 11, 2025)
• HHS: Use of online tracking technologies by HIPAA covered entities and business associates
• American Hospital Association v. Becerra, N.D. Tex., order of June 20, 2024
• FTC: Changes to the Health Breach Notification Rule (April 2024)
• Google: The Check Up 2025, health AI updates (March 18, 2025)
• Google: The Check Up 2026, health AI updates (March 17, 2026)
• High Salience: AI answers in four industries (dataset)

The Category Salience Brief runs your patients' questions across Google and the AI surfaces, shows which providers and sources win them, and ranks what to fix first.