AI recommendations for med spas varied by city.
We asked ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity to recommend med spas 90 times — six questions, five metros, every answer saved with its sources. They named 202 businesses. AI recommendation openness runs 54–75 out of 100, with a mix of repeat names and one-off mentions. Across the five cities, the assistants named 202 different med spas.
Definition: openness measures how spread out the business names were in these answers. Higher means more dispersed; lower means more concentrated. It is not market saturation, demand, or a quality score.
Highest openness score first.
Tampa has this trade's highest score at 75; Austin has its lowest at 54. 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 med spas 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.
- Suddenly Slimmer Med Spa Phoenix · named in 11 of 18 answers
- Viva Day Spa + Med Spa Austin · named in 11 of 18 answers
- Chic la Vie Medical Spa & Laser Institute Las Vegas · named in 10 of 18 answers
- The Look Med Spa Las Vegas · named in 10 of 18 answers
- BEAUX MedSpa Austin · named in 8 of 18 answers
- Rejuvenate MedSpa Denver · named in 8 of 18 answers
- Aesthetica Cosmetic & Laser Austin · named in 6 of 18 answers
- RESTOR Medical Spa Denver · named in 6 of 18 answers
3 brands crossed city lines. Everyone else is local.
Of the 202 named businesses, 96% appeared in exactly one metro. The exceptions — named in three or more of the five cities — are national operations:
- Milan Laser Hair Removal named in Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, Tampa
- LaserAway named in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa
- SkinSpirit named in Austin, Denver, Phoenix
A further 5 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 96% 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 med spas:
- medicalspalocator.com cited 36 times
- medspascout.com cited 30 times
- discovermedspa.com cited 25 times
- yelp.com cited 24 times
- reddit.com cited 19 times
- realself.com cited 15 times
- thelookmedspalv.com cited 13 times
- luxeroomcosmetic.com cited 13 times
- suddenlyslimmer.com cited 12 times
- skinspirit.com cited 11 times
- phxskin.com cited 11 times
- restormedicalspa.com cited 10 times
Directories supplied just 7.8–15.1% of citations — among the lowest of the trades we measure. In this trade the assistants read businesses' own websites and reviews more than aggregator profiles: the evidence you control outweighs the evidence you petition.
One count we will not publish.
For other trades this section compares the named businesses against the Census establishment count. The Census has no category for med spas, and dressing up adjacent codes — beauty salons, physicians' offices — as one would be a confident-looking wrong number. What is measured stays: 202 businesses named across 90 recorded answers.
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 med spa in [city]? commercial
- I want to get Botox for the first time in [city] and I am worried about picking the wrong place. Which local med spa should I go to? situational
- Who is the best place for laser hair removal in [city]? commercial
- I am looking for a med spa in [city] with a licensed injector for lip filler. Which one should I book? situational
- Which med spa in [city] has the best client reviews? commercial
- Who is the best medical spa for skin treatments 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 98 businesses, Perplexity named 93 businesses, ChatGPT named 85 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.
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