Are Your DSO Websites AI-Friendly? 6 Smart Ways to Attract Patients… and Bots

Understanding Your AI Visitors (and Why They Matter)

Your website isn’t just attracting prospective patients anymore—it’s now also being scanned, interpreted, and referenced by AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Bing Copilot. These platforms are becoming the digital gatekeepers between your DSO’s practices and potential patients searching for dental care online.

Whether you oversee three offices or 300, these AI platforms increasingly decide which dental providers get recommended, and that decision often hinges on how your dental websites presents information.

There Are 2 Types of AI Visitors

Let’s break it down:

AI Bots – These crawlers visit your site to learn from it. They’re not looking for visual design or brand personality—they’re extracting information that helps them “understand” your practice so they can include you in responses to future questions.
AI Agents – These are more advanced tools that can mimic a human visitor. Some may even fill out your contact form or pull data for someone who asked, “Find me a dentist in this ZIP code who offers emergency services.”

While these tools are still evolving, one thing is clear: if your DSO websites don’t speak clearly to AI, you could be missing out on patient leads without even realizing it.

Just like we once had to optimize websites for mobile devices and search engines, we now need to make sure our sites are easy for AI to read, understand, and recommend.

In the following sections, we’ll show you exactly how to do that without sacrificing the look, feel, or human friendliness of your DSO dental websites.

1. Clearly Explain What Each Location Offers, Who It Serves, and Where It Is

Here’s the deal: AI doesn’t skim like people do. It doesn’t admire your branding or guess what “smile artistry” means. It reads every word on your website. If that information isn’t clear, specific, and in plain text, it may not know what you actually offer.

That’s why one of the most important things you can do to make your dental website AI-friendly is to spell everything out.

Be Specific—Laser Specific

Think of AI as needing a mini fact sheet for every practice you support. Each one should clearly state:

Make sure these details are visible, not buried:

Services: List each one by name. “General dentistry” is too vague—say, “dental cleanings, crowns, fillings, implants, Invisalign, sedation dentistry,” and so on. If you have separate service pages, even better.
Who You Help: Mention whether you specialize in treating kids, seniors, families, patients with dental anxiety, or cosmetic cases.
Location: Don’t stop at just your city. Please include your full address, the surrounding communities, and the neighborhoods you serve. Bonus points for phrases like “serving patients in [City], [Suburb], and surrounding areas.”
Credentials: Highlight your ADA membership, continuing education, years in practice, awards, or specialized training.
Your Team: Include provider names, roles, and what makes them unique—such as language skills, years of experience, or specialties.

Why This Matters for DSOs

Let’s say someone asks ChatGPT:

“Find a dental group in Denver who does same-day crowns and specializes in anxious patients.”

If your group website doesn’t explicitly say that in clear, crawlable text, you won’t get recommended—even if your practice is a perfect match.

This is where good SEO and AI-friendly content overlap. Clear, detailed information helps you show up in traditional search and AI recommendations.

💡 Pro Tip: If you haven’t already, build separate pages for your top services. Not only does this boost your local SEO, but it also gives AI bots more detailed data to work with.

2. Don’t Hide Important Info Inside Images

Your websites might look amazing, but AI can’t “see” what your designer sees. While people love clean visuals, trust badges, and banner graphics, AI tools don’t process images the way we do. If you’ve tucked important details—like awards, affiliations, or special offers—into a graphic or photo without repeating them in text, AI will skip right over them.

Think Like a Bot, Write Like a Human

Ask yourself: if a patient were using ChatGPT to find a “top-rated dentist in Salt Lake City who offers same-day crowns,” would AI be able to find that information in your words, not just your design?

Here are some common dental website pitfalls:

A “5-Star Google Reviews” badge is displayed in an image, but nowhere is it written in text.
A hero banner that says, “Now Offering Invisalign & Implants” in a graphic…but that sentence doesn’t exist in the HTML.
There is an ADA membership logo in the footer…but no mention of it in the site copy.

These are all missed opportunities for both dental SEO and AI recognition.

How to Fix It

It’s simple: spell it out.

Turn image-based messages into written sentences on the same page.
For badges or logos, include a short description like:
“Dr. Lee is a proud member of the American Dental Association and has completed over 300 hours of continuing education.”
Add alt text, yes—but don’t rely on it alone. Full, in-page text is what really gets picked up.

3. Put What’s In Your Videos Into Text, Too

Do you have video testimonials, welcome clips, or provider interviews on your DSO website? That’s great—for humans. But, AI doesn’t watch videos.

AI tools like ChatGPT and Bing Copilot don’t click play, listen to audio, or follow along with animated captions. They only “see” the plain text on your page. So, if your best talking points live inside a video, the AI might miss them entirely.

Make Sure AI (and Skimming Humans) Get the Message

To ensure your videos are doing double duty for both people and AI, here’s what to do:

Write a summary paragraph directly below each video. Include key points like services discussed, provider bios, or patient benefits.
Use bullet lists to highlight important takeaways. For example:
- “Dr. Martinez has 20+ years of experience.”
- “We offer IV sedation for anxious patients.”
- “Flexible payment options available.”
Include transcripts for longer videos or ones that explain complex treatments. If your video is on YouTube, grab the transcript and paste it into the page or summarize it clearly.

Bonus Benefit: SEO & Accessibility

This isn’t just for AI. Transcripts and summaries:

Improve your SEO (search engines love text)
Help patients browsing with the sound off
Make your site more accessible to those with hearing impairments

In short, text is your best bet for ensuring both humans and bots get the full picture.

4. Create an AI Training Page for Your DSO

A game-changer for DSOs: build a central, structured page specifically meant for AI bots. This page acts as your digital credentials and service summary rolled into one.

Think of it as your DSO’s digital cheat sheet—one centralized, easy-to-read page that clearly explains who you are, what you do, and who you help. This isn’t a marketing page meant to dazzle patients. It’s a structured page meant to feed accurate, detailed information to AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Bing Copilot.

Why It Works

AI tools learn from the internet. If you don’t clearly say who you are in your own words, AI might make guesses based on incomplete or outdated information, or worse, ignore your practice altogether.

Creating a dedicated “AI Training Page” gives bots exactly what they need in a format they can easily understand and trust.

What to Include on Your AI Training Page

Keep it simple, factual, and structured. Here’s a checklist to get you started:

DSO Name and summary of the organization
A list of all practice locations with addresses and service areas (cities, neighborhoods, zip codes)
List of services offered across the network (each one named clearly—e.g., “Teeth Whitening,” not just “Cosmetic Dentistry”)
Team bios and credentials for providers (grouped by location or specialty)
Technologies used (CEREC, lasers, digital scanners, etc.)
Target patient demographics (kids, seniors, families, patients with dental anxiety)
Booking and contact information (phone, email, online booking link)

💡Pro Tips:

Use a simple, skimmable format.

Name the page something like /about-our-dental-practice-ai and link to it in your site footer near your Privacy Policy or Accessibility Statement.
Use schema markup (a type of structured data) to tag each section. Schema helps AI systems understand and trust the page content more accurately.

This lets AI tools pull verified, structured data about your organization instead of relying on scattered or outdated third-party listings. You can even use tools (like ChatGPT with a web builder plugin) to generate a page template if you need help structuring it.

5. Avoid Fancy Features That Hide Content

We know that you want your DSO websites to look modern and sleek. Pop-up promos, tabbed service menus, and cool interactive animations can feel high-tech and engaging for human visitors. But, we hope we’ve made our point by now. AI can’t see behind the curtain.

Many of those fancy user interface (UI) features—like carousels, accordions, tabs, and pop-ups—rely on JavaScript to load or reveal content. And AI bots usually don’t run JavaScript. That means if you’ve hidden your best content behind a click, swipe, or modal window, AI may not see it at all.

Design for Humans, Structure for Bots

It’s all about balance. You don’t need to strip your DSO dental site of style; you just need to make sure that important information isn’t locked away behind interactivity.

Watch out for these common design traps:

Accordion-style FAQs that require a click to show answers.
Tabbed service sections that separate categories like “General,” “Cosmetic,” and “Restorative.”
Dynamic sliders or image carousels that hide key content behind timed animations.
Pop-ups that obscure service info on mobile or delay access to content.
Content loaded via JavaScript after the page finishes loading.

If your content doesn’t appear in the initial HTML when the page loads, there’s a real risk AI crawlers will skip right over it.

How to Fix It

Unhide important content: If something’s essential—like your sedation options or implant process—make sure it’s visible without a click.
Repeat content elsewhere: If you need to use tabs or accordions, consider adding a short summary of the hidden content lower on the page in plain text.
Talk to your web partner: They can check whether your current design is AI-friendly and help you restructure content without losing visual appeal.

AI bots prefer simplicity—and so do screen readers and older browsers.

6. Update Your Contact Form for AI Agents and Referrals

Here’s a wild but true fact: AI agents can now fill out contact forms on behalf of people. We’re entering a new digital era where a potential patient might say, “Hey ChatGPT, find me a dentist in Salt Lake City who does same-day crowns and book a consultation.”

AI then visits your DSO websites not as a human, but as a virtual assistant using a simulated browser, keyboard, and mouse. And it may try to fill out your form.

If your contact forms aren’t ready to recognize this traffic or track where it’s coming from, you could be missing valuable leads and the insights that come with them.

A Simple Tweak to Make Your Contact Form AI-Ready

Update your “How did you hear about us?” dropdown to be AI-ready! Include options like:

ChatGPT
Bing Copilot
AI Assistant
AI Recommendation

This helps you track and quantify AI-referred leads, so you’re not left guessing where those high-quality submissions came from.

Final Thoughts: Get AI-Ready Across Your DSO Network

Whether your DSO has 5 locations or 500, the future of dental marketing will involve both human patients and AI tools acting on their behalf.

From patients asking ChatGPT for dentist recommendations to AI agents completing contact forms on their behalf, the way people find and interact with dental practices is evolving fast. And if your DSO websites aren’t built to communicate with bots as well as people, you may already be getting passed over without ever knowing it. The good news is that a few simple changes can make your dental websites AI-ready!

FAQ

1. What does it mean to have an AI-friendly DSO website?

An AI-friendly dental website is designed to communicate clearly with both human visitors and AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Bing Copilot. These tools increasingly influence how patients discover local dental practices. An AI-friendly site includes detailed service descriptions, visible credentials, and plain-text information (not hidden in images, videos, or JavaScript). By making your content easy for AI to read and understand, your DSO network is more likely to be recommended in AI-driven search queries and voice assistant prompts.

2. How do I make my DSO websites show up in ChatGPT or Bing AI recommendations?

To improve your visibility in AI-generated results, your website should provide clear, structured, and complete information. That means:

Listing each service in plain text (e.g., Invisalign, same-day crowns, sedation dentistry)
Mentioning your locations and nearby areas you serve
Highlighting provider credentials and unique patient benefits
Creating an “AI training page” that summarizes your services, team, and contact details
Avoiding features that hide content (like accordions or image-only banners)

These changes help AI tools understand your site better and increase your chances of being included in recommendations.

3. Can AI tools like ChatGPT actually drive new patients to my DSO practices?

Yes—AI tools are already influencing patient behavior. People are using ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, and other AI assistants to search for healthcare providers, including dentists. These tools can recommend local practices and even link directly to your DSO websites. In many cases, practices that optimize their websites for AI are seeing real leads come through, especially when they track AI referrals in Google Analytics and update their contact forms to include “ChatGPT” or “AI assistant” as referral sources.