Nobody owns the AI answer for dental practices.
We asked ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity to recommend dental practices 90 times — six questions, five metros, every answer saved with its sources. They named 274 businesses. No market produced a dominant name: the openness score runs 80–90 out of 100, the highest of the six trades we measure, and the leading business in most cities was named in fewer than a quarter of its answers.
Most open first.
Tampa is this trade's most open market at 90; Las Vegas its most settled at 80. Each city link carries the full record — every business named, for which of the six questions, and the sources cited to justify it.
The names that came back most, anywhere.
Across all 90 answers, these dental practices were named most often in their own market. Not a quality ranking and none are our clients — this is a record of who the assistants kept reaching for on July 26, 2026.
- OG Dental Denver · named in 4 of 18 answers
- Summerlin Dental Solutions Las Vegas · named in 4 of 18 answers
- Aloha Orthodontics Las Vegas · named in 3 of 18 answers
- Aria Dental Implant Center Phoenix · named in 3 of 18 answers
- Bright Now! Dental in North Central Phoenix Phoenix · named in 3 of 18 answers
- Chenin Orthodontic Group Las Vegas · named in 3 of 18 answers
- Corson Dentistry Denver · named in 3 of 18 answers
- Emergency Dental of Denver Denver · named in 3 of 18 answers
1 brand crossed city lines. Everyone else is local.
Of the 274 named businesses, 98% appeared in exactly one metro. The exceptions — named in three or more of the five cities — are national operations:
- ClearChoice named in Austin, Las Vegas, Phoenix
A further 4 names matched across two metros; at two, similarly named but unrelated businesses are still plausible, so we count them without naming them. The takeaway cuts both ways: national brands earn AI visibility from sheer documentation volume, but 98% of this trade's AI answer is still local — a well-evidenced local company is not fighting franchises for the recommendation.
Where the assistants got their answers.
Every recommendation carries citations, and the citations are the actionable part: they are the pages deciding who gets named. Across all five metros, the sources cited most for dental practices:
- yelp.com cited 32 times
- reddit.com cited 19 times
- toprateddentist.com cited 18 times
- zocdoc.com cited 16 times
- healthgrades.com cited 13 times
- opencare.com cited 11 times
- smilegeneration.com cited 8 times
- nationalorthodonticregistry.com cited 7 times
- deltadental.com cited 6 times
- tampamagazines.com cited 6 times
- dentalsolutionslv.com cited 5 times
- lasvegasdentalgroup.com cited 5 times
Directories supplied 11.8–21.0% of citations depending on the city — present, but not decisive. The rest went to businesses' own sites, local press, and forums, which is where the answer is actually won.
274 named, out of 4,751 businesses.
County Business Patterns counts 4,751 offices of dentists with paid employees across these five counties (Clark County, Hillsborough County, Denver County, Maricopa County, Travis County). The assistants named 274 — and named only 60 of those more than once. That ratio is the whole argument for caring about AI visibility: the funnel from existing to recommended is brutally narrow, and almost nobody is competing for it deliberately.
Checkable, and meant to be argued with.
The exact six questions, asked per city with the city's name in place of the bracket:
- Who is the best dentist in [city]? commercial
- I just moved to [city] and need a family dentist who takes my insurance. Which local practice should I choose? situational
- Who is the best dentist for dental implants in [city]? commercial
- I cracked a tooth in [city] and I am in pain. Which local dentist should I call today? situational
- Which dental practice in [city] has the best patient reviews? commercial
- Who is the best orthodontist for Invisalign in [city]? commercial
Each went once to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity with web search enabled — 90 recorded answers for this trade, in which Google Gemini named 136 businesses, Perplexity named 106 businesses, ChatGPT named 80 businesses. Names are resolved across spelling variants within each metro; cross-metro brand matching is deliberately conservative and only names a company seen in three or more cities. Assistants are non-deterministic, so this is a dated snapshot, not a standing ranking, and being named is not an endorsement — none of the businesses above are our clients. The full methodology covers the prompts, the openness formula, and what these numbers cannot support. Findings are CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Working in this trade? What we build for dental practices covers the commercial side, and the free AI visibility report runs these questions against your own market.
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