AI assistants recommend private clinics they can verify: a registered and rated service, named doctors whose registration can be checked, published fees and recent reviews from real patients. Make your CQC (or HIS or HIW) status, your clinicians' GMC details and your prices plain on your website, keep Doctify, Top Doctors, insurer and PHIN profiles consistent with it, and keep prescription medicines out of your marketing. Patients paying privately compare carefully, and assistants reward the clinic that makes comparison easy.
Key takeaways
- Patients ask AI about speed, price and credibility: "private GP appointment today", "how much is a private blood test", "is this clinic CQC registered".
- In England, a rated provider must show its CQC rating, with a link and date, on every website it maintains.
- Prescription-only medicines, including weight-loss injections, cannot be advertised to the public. Promote the consultation, not the drug.
- Doctify, Top Doctors, insurer directories and PHIN are places patients and assistants check your claims against.
- Check what AI says about your clinic monthly, with the same questions each time.
What do patients ask AI when they're looking for a private clinic?
They want to be seen quickly, know the cost up front and trust the doctor. The prompts below are illustrative examples of the kinds of questions patients ask, not measured search volumes.
| Intent | Example prompts (illustrative) |
|---|---|
| Urgent | "Private GP appointment today in Birmingham", "walk-in private clinic open Sunday near Canary Wharf" |
| Comparison | "Private GP subscription or pay per visit?", "is a private health MOT worth it?" |
| Local | "Private menopause clinic in Leeds", "private ADHD assessment near Bristol with a consultant psychiatrist" |
| Price | "How much is a private GP appointment in Manchester?", "cost of a private blood test in Glasgow" |
| Trust | "Is [clinic name] CQC registered?", "is Dr [name] on the GMC register?", "reviews of [clinic name]" |
Where does AI get its answers about private clinics?
From your website and Google listing, regulator pages, private healthcare platforms and insurer directories. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on indexed pages eligible for a snippet (Google Search Central, 2025).
| Source | What it is | Why it matters for private clinics |
|---|---|---|
| Your website | Services, fees, doctors, regulator status | Where every fact an assistant needs should be stated first. |
| CQC (England) | Registers providers of regulated activities and publishes ratings | Carrying on a regulated activity without registration is an offence (legislation.gov.uk). |
| HIS (Scotland) and HIW (Wales) | Regulators of independent clinics | HIS registers clinics where doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, dental care professionals, pharmacists or pharmacy technicians provide services (HIS, n.d.). HIW registers independent hospitals, clinics and medical agencies, including online private GP services based in Wales (HIW, n.d.). |
| GMC register | The public register of doctors | Shows whether a doctor is registered and licensed to practise, and whether they are on the GP or Specialist Register (GMC, n.d.). |
| Doctify and Top Doctors | Private healthcare search, booking and review platforms | Doctify promotes "verified patient reviews" (Doctify, n.d.). Top Doctors says it confirms the patient attended before a review is published (Top Doctors, n.d.). |
| PHIN | Private Healthcare Information Network | Independent, not-for-profit profiles of private consultants and hospitals, including consultant fees (PHIN, n.d.), required under the CMA's 2014 Order (CMA, 2014). |
| Insurer directories | For example Bupa Finder | Lists Bupa-recognised consultants, hospitals and healthcare services (Bupa, n.d.). |
| US equivalents | State medical board lookups, booking and review platforms | US health claims are policed by the FTC, which expects competent and reliable scientific evidence (FTC, n.d.). |
The 8-step plan to get your clinic recommended
Steps 1 to 3 can be done this week.
Display your CQC rating properly (England). Regulation 20A requires every website maintained by or for a rated provider to show the CQC's website address, a link to the latest assessment and the most recent rating, legibly and conspicuously, with the date it was given (legislation.gov.uk). Put it on the homepage and on each location page. In Scotland or Wales, state your HIS or HIW registration.
Name every clinician with their registration. For doctors, give the GMC number and whether they are a GP or on the Specialist Register. For nurses, pharmacists and other professionals, give their regulator and number. Assistants answering "is Dr X qualified?" need something checkable.
Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Use your real-world clinic name with no added keywords, pick the most specific category, and keep hours accurate, including same-day and weekend availability (Google Business Profile Help, n.d.).
Publish fees in plain text. Consultation length and price, follow-up, common tests, and what is and isn't included. Say which insurers you work with. Private patients ask about cost before anything else, and an assistant can only quote a published price.
Write service pages within GMC and CAP rules. The GMC expects doctors advertising their services to be honest and trustworthy, with information that is not false or misleading and is verifiable, and to avoid pressure tactics and financial inducements such as time-limited or two-for-one offers (Medical Protection, 2025). Describe what a consultation involves, who it suits and when you'll refer on.
Keep prescription medicines out of marketing. The ASA's enforcement notice states that "No POM may be advertised to the public", covering paid social, organic posts, search ads, influencers and affiliates (ASA, 2025). The ASA's updated guidance says indirect references count too, such as "weight-loss injection" or "GLP-1", or imagery likely to be read as an injection pen (ASA, 2025). Describe your clinical service and consultation without naming or implying a medicine.
Make your platform profiles match your website. Claim Doctify and Top Doctors profiles if you use them, check insurer directory entries, and ask consultants who also work in private hospitals to complete their PHIN profiles. Mismatched fees or job titles across these sites give assistants conflicting facts.
Add structured data, collect reviews fairly and let crawlers in. Schema.org's MedicalClinic sits under LocalBusiness and MedicalBusiness (Schema.org, n.d.); include the properties Google documents for local businesses (Google Search Central, n.d.). Ask every patient for a review the same way, with no incentive (Google Business Profile Help, n.d.); UK law bans fake and incentivised reviews (CMA, 2025). Reply without confirming anyone is a patient. Finally, check robots.txt: OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot won't appear in ChatGPT search answers (OpenAI, n.d.), Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot (Perplexity, n.d.), and Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce visibility in Claude (Anthropic, n.d.).
Mistakes that keep private clinics out of AI answers
- A CQC badge with no link or date. It falls short of Regulation 20A and is harder for anyone to verify.
- Doctors listed by first name only. Without a full name and GMC number, a patient (or an assistant) can't check them.
- "Price on request". Comparison is the whole point of going private.
- Naming prescription drugs in ads, social posts, hashtags or page titles.
- Discount codes and countdown offers for medical consultations, which sit badly with GMC expectations on inducements.
- Profiles that disagree. Different fees on Doctify, PHIN and your website make every source less trustworthy.
How do you check whether AI recommends your clinic?
Ask the assistants what your patients ask, and write down the answers. Repeat monthly.
- Pick 10 prompts from the table above, using your town and two neighbouring areas, with at least three service-specific prompts.
- Run each in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode), Gemini, Claude and Copilot, in a private window where possible.
- Note whether you are named, who else is named, which sources are cited, and whether your CQC rating and fees are stated correctly.
- Trace and fix any wrong fact at its source.
- In Google Search Console, AI feature traffic is included in the Performance report under "Web" (Google Search Central, 2025).
SearchCrow runs these checks for you. It asks the main AI assistants the questions patients ask about private clinics in your area, shows whether your clinic is mentioned and which sources they rely on, and suggests what to fix first. It is built for independent clinics and small groups.
FAQ
Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my private clinic? Usually because it can't verify you or match you to the question. Assistants that search the web look for a named doctor they can check, a regulator rating, a published price and recent reviews. A clinic whose site lists services without fees, doctors without GMC numbers or a CQC rating without a link gives them less to go on than a competitor that states all four.
Do I have to show my CQC rating on my website? Yes, if you are a registered provider in England that has been rated. Regulation 20A of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 requires every website maintained by or for the provider to show the CQC's website address, a link to the latest assessment and the most recent rating, with the date it was given.
Can a private clinic advertise weight-loss injections or other prescription medicines? No. Prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public. The ASA's September 2025 enforcement notice on weight-management medicines restates that "No POM may be advertised to the public" and covers paid social, organic posts, search ads, influencers and affiliates. You can promote a consultation or a weight-management service, without naming or implying a prescription medicine.
What is PHIN and does it matter to my clinic? PHIN, the Private Healthcare Information Network, publishes profiles of UK private consultants and hospitals, including consultant fees and hospital data, under the CMA's Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order 2014. If your consultants practise in private hospitals, check their PHIN profiles are complete, because patients and assistants can compare those figures with your website.
Do private clinics in Scotland and Wales register with the CQC? No. The CQC covers England. In Scotland, independent clinics where doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, dental care professionals, pharmacists or pharmacy technicians provide services must register with Healthcare Improvement Scotland. In Wales, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales registers independent hospitals, independent clinics and independent medical agencies.
Sources
- Regulation 20A, legislation.gov.uk
- Health and Social Care Act 2008, section 10, legislation.gov.uk
- What to check, General Medical Council
- Advertising your practice, Medical Protection
- Enforcement Notice: prescription-only medicines used for weight management, ASA / CAP
- Updated Enforcement Notice on weight-loss prescription medicine ads, ASA
- Welcome to the PHIN website, PHIN
- Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order 2014, CMA
- Doctify, Doctify
- Reviews from Top Doctors users, Top Doctors
- Information for service providers: Independent clinics, Healthcare Improvement Scotland
- Guidance for applicants, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales
- Bupa Finder, Bupa
- MedicalClinic, Schema.org
- AI features and your website, Google Search Central
- Local business structured data, Google Search Central
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help
- Get reviews on your Business Profile, Google Business Profile Help
- Fake reviews (CMA208), CMA
- Health Products Compliance Guidance, US Federal Trade Commission
- Overview of OpenAI crawlers, OpenAI
- Perplexity crawlers, Perplexity
- Anthropic crawler FAQ, Anthropic