AI Is Changing How Patients Find You—Everything You Need to Know to Adapt & Thrive!

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Intro: You are now listening to another episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast, where we explore the various challenges faced by dental practices due to their reliance on insurance. Join us in this podcast as we dive deep into the issues surrounding dental insurance dependence and offer practical solutions and strategies to help you take control of your practice’s financial future.

Ben Tuinei: Welcome to another exciting episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast. My name is Ben, and I’m one of the co-hosts on this podcast dedicated to helping practices that are tangled up with insurance. And as you know, we talk about a lot of things in dental—topics that help make your practice, uh, bigger and more successful, uh, as well as taking more control back from your practice, especially from those insurance companies—to your practice, that is. So today I have my good friend and co-host with me, who I’ll be interviewing: Naren. How are you, Naren?

Naren Arulrajah: I’m doing great, Ben, and yourself?

Ben Tuinei: Doing excellent, thank you. Super excited about today’s episode. So here’s the topic: AI is changing how patients find you—everything you need to know to adapt and to thrive. I love it. I always, uh, you know, when I think about this, uh, whole component of AI, especially when you’re looking at Google now, it seems like patients aren’t just Googling "find a dentist" anymore. They’re asking AI. You know, for instance, "Who’s the best cosmetic dentist near me?" or "How much does Invisalign cost?" or "Do I need to get it?" You know, uh, "Do I need a crown or a filling for certain things?" You know, you know, and many times patients are getting answers without even clicking on a single link. You know, I think this is called, what, Zero Click Search, you know? And to me, I feel like that’s really changing the game in a big, big way.

Ben Tuinei: Uh, so, so I see this already on Google, right? Look, so when I use voice-to-text on Google, this is already coming up. And then, you know, AI—the Google AI system—will give you kind of an overview of what you’re asking, um, and it kind of seems like that in and of itself is also evolving. You know, so I heard, Naren, that there’s something new coming up called AI Mode, and perhaps we’ll talk about this a little bit further.

Um, but here’s the thing—even though AI tools are changing how people search, the fundamentals of search haven’t changed at all. And, and, and, you know, at least from what I understand, you know, Google still wants to recommend the most helpful, relevant, and trustworthy sources. So you still get those links populated in there. So that means your practice needs to look good, sound great, and be trusted, you know, everywhere online—not just your website, right?

So, so Naren, let’s, let’s dive into some of these questions here about this topic. Can you elaborate more on what Zero Click means and why dentists should care about that?

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. Just to kind of put some context, we have been working on AI search for six-plus years, and specifically Zero Click Search at least for five-plus years. Let me explain what I mean by that, right? Google wants to become even more valuable, even more integral in the parts of everyday life, because if every decision you make as a human being is influenced by Google, Google can make a cut. You know what I mean? For every one of those decisions—whether it’s finding a restaurant, whether it’s finding a dentist, whether it’s, you know, buying a product that you heard about for the very first time.

So Google has always tried to figure out, like, how do we become—remember, nobody signs a contract with Google for Google to enforce that contract—so Google’s thinking is, how can we become even more part of people’s decision-making?

Naren Arulrajah: And the idea of a Zero Click Search kind of started with that mindset. Like, how do we become invaluable? How do we become just how people live today? So, for example, a good way to think about it, a good way to understand Zero Click Searches: Google Maps or Google My Business. A lot of times you might type in, you know, “dentist near me” or “Invisalign near me,” and Google will show somebody as part of that search based on, you know, how the SEO is being optimized now—lighthouse code, all the fundamentals of SEO—but also show the reviews, also show the phone number. So you don’t have to kind of click on multiple pages and go to multiple places to get further answers. You literally have all the things you need to decide if this is the right person.

One, You show up on Google—and that itself gives people confidence that you must be good. Otherwise, why are you showing up on Google without paying for ad dollars?

Two, I see the reviews. So now I’m given even more information to feel good about what I’m seeing. And I’m seeing how many reviews you have, I’m seeing how many stars you have. You know, I can even read one or two lines of the, you know, the most relevant review. So if it’s “Invisalign near me,” then the review might talk about Invisalign.

And finally, the phone number is there, the form is there, the chatbot is there—all in that one spot. So I don’t have to go to three places to figure things out. That’s what Google means by Zero Click Search. In other words, in one page or one place, I get all the information I need to not only like the person but also choose the person.

Naren Arulrajah: So we have been at this for, you know, years and years and years. So we pay attention, for example, on Google Maps as well as on regular SEO, because we are noticing more than half the people are kind of lazy. They like this Zero Click Search idea. So you’re getting more and more traffic if you’re one of our clients on Google Maps—they’re all connected at the hip. So pretty much those who are doing well on regular SEO are doing well on Google Maps and vice versa.

Now it’s extending to voice, right? That’s what you alluded to. But it’s the same idea: in one spot, I get all the information I need. And I think this trend—Google has been investing in AI for, I think, close to eight, nine years. It’s the company that started investing first in AI, pretty much before everybody else. And even today, it controls 90% of the local search market. So definitely Google is leaning more and more into AI, and we are noticing it in how they behave and what they’re doing.

But the fundamentals are the same—Google still wants to help the consumer find the right answer for their search as quickly as possible and get all the information they need so they don’t have to go to three different places to get all the information they need.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, kind of like they just wanna be a one-stop shop, right? To get you all the answers that you might need so you don’t go to other search engines, you know?

And, um, now, I like that. I noticed when I search for things on Google, Naren, um, a lot of times you get those AI answers that pop up first, right? And it says that this is the AI-generated answer. The question is, you know, what should I be doing as a dentist on my website to show up in these Google AI answers that are given to people that are searching for things?

Naren Arulrajah: Again, this is something we have been working on for a few years now. So, for example, you can use FAQ-type answers, you can use bullet points, you can use headings, you can use all different formats that Google recommends you use to help people understand that you are the right answer or the right person for their need.

Another example of this is Google EEAT, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. And it’s one of the six core elements of SEO. And if you set up your pages properly—where Google sees you as somebody with experience, Google sees you as someone who’s an expert, Google sees you as an authority, etc.—and again, you have to do it the right way. There are technical things you have to pay attention to to get a high score on Google EEAT. And this is specifically important for healthcare practices.

Naren Arulrajah: You’re gonna do well. And again, this is not new. We have been at this for years and years and years. So a lot of times what’s going on is Google has been doing AI for a long time. We just—now it’s like putting it at the center of it. So E-E-A-T used to be important. Now it’s, like, very important. And we are so glad we have been working on this for at least three-plus years now. So our clients are already dominating Google EEAT compliance, and therefore they are ranking for even more keywords.

Like, you know, we promise a minimum of 100 keywords in year one, because if you’re ranking for 100 or more keywords in year one, you’re going to dominate Google SEO and you’re gonna have an unfair advantage. But some of these clients are now ranking for 150 keywords, 200 keywords. They’re tending—they’re seeming to do even better than, you know, they were pre-AI focused.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. I think, um, I see the AI theme populating everywhere, especially on Google these days. And sometimes I wonder, Naren, how is AI choosing which dentist to recommend?

Naren Arulrajah: Now, I know when people think about AI, they sometimes think of ChatGPT, because that’s the name they first heard of with that chat AI interface. So that has a good brand awareness.

So what we are noticing is people are still using things like ChatGPT to do tasks. Like, for example, you know, I have this, uh, patient I saw—can you summarize what I did in a letter to the referring doctor? You don’t have to do it. Yeah, it will do it.

Naren Arulrajah: “Oh, I had this difficult patient. Can you write this letter explaining these things, but in a way that doesn’t offend them?” Right?

So people are using tools like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and all these other tools to do tasks.

Second use case they’re using AI for is deep research. Like, for example, you want to write a—you know, especially kids, right?

They want to write a paper—you literally can have the AI write that paper for you. You can say, “Here’s what I’m looking for, here are the things I want to cover. It has to be 500 words. Go to town.” And AI will do it.

Of course, there are tools now that will help schools figure out who’s using AI and who’s not, so you’ll get penalized and you’ll get blacklisted. But that’s a different story. So people are using it to get work done.

Like, for example, I was overhearing a conversation at a healthcare clinic where this particular person’s job is to read this 100-page report and summarize it for the patient in one or two pages. It’s great at it. It reads the 100 pages and it gives them the key points in like one or two pages.

Naren Arulrajah: And he copy-pastes that and he sends it to the patient along with the detailed report. Now, he was telling me—I hope I heard him say that—it used to take me like, you know, six hours to read a 100-page report. Now I’m done in like five minutes. AI will do all the work in less than two minutes. I just have to read it and hit send.

Now, the flip side of this is that what he’s not realizing is his job is gonna be gone. Because one day his boss is gonna wake up and say, “Why am I paying this guy eight hours a day when he’s doing two minutes worth of work or five minutes worth of work?” Right? Eventually, either it’s gonna be part of the software itself, or smart business owners are gonna say, “Why am I paying people to do things that AI can do?”

Naren Arulrajah: So it is good at a lot of things—summarizing, deep research, etc. So I think that’s what’s going on.

When it comes to local search, remember, you are a local business owner in a local town. Really, it’s a decision-making tool. People are using Google, but they’re not using ChatGPT or, you know, any of these traditional AI tools for decision-making. Why? Because they’re used to Google being the decision-making tool. It has the reviews, it has your ratings, it has rankings, it has the before and afters—it’s that one-stop shop we talked about, right? Zero Click Search. So Google is just so way ahead of the game.

And the other problem that these AI companies have is they don’t have real-time data. Google is scraping a website literally—depending on how active your website is—maybe even multiple times a day. Many of these AI companies don’t have Google’s millions and millions of servers to scrape every website multiple times a day.

Naren Arulrajah: So they have outdated information. Like, for example, I went to Italy and then I used Grok and ChatGPT to kind of help plan my trip. And as part of that, it gave me restaurants to go to. And two of those restaurants don’t even exist—literally, they have been shut down for like, I guess, six months or a year. AI, I guess, is using an old, old database.

So I think to answer your question on, you know, what to do—don’t overthink, you know, the names ChatGPT and Grok and so forth. Just lean into the fundamentals.

So going back to like Google reviews, right? Google now has something called AI Overview. Now, it’s not using it as much for local search because Google knows people are not trying to get a summary or learn about a topic when they’re doing a local search.

Naren Arulrajah: But if they type in something like, you know, “Tell me about the 13th Amendment,” then it’ll give you an AI Overview. Instead of you having to read the whole 13th Amendment, it’ll summarize what the 13th Amendment is and what the key points are—of course, with the link to the full 13th Amendment if you want to go and read the whole thing, right?

So, yeah, I would say keep leaning into Google reviews, keep leaning into your reviews on other platforms, because that’s becoming more and more important data point. And all the points I added as answers to my last questions around Google EEAT—these are all things you should do to continue to do well in the AI timeline.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, it seems like AI is just, you know, what’s populating—especially in the dental world—are websites that have, um, a lot of articles, a lot of repeat things, right? That, that which kind of portrays them as the authority on certain things that you’re asking for.

But, um, no, I like what you said there, Naren. And I think, you know, I’m kind of thinking of the old-school version of doing things versus all these big technological changes that are advancing just in the last couple of years.

You know, what’s the risk if I’m a dentist—and what’s the risk if I’m not looking at adapting to all these changes?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, I mean, Google makes 200 changes a year and, um, you know—sorry—300 changes a year. That’s 10 changes a day. And it was always the case, but now maybe it’s even accelerating. So we are noticing that number of 300 changes a year is going up and up and up. Why? Because things are moving faster and faster and faster.

So if you don’t stay on top of it—like, we have six teams. We have a team focused on links that you have from other websites, and a team focused on NAP (Name, Address, Phone), a team focused on Google EEAT, Google Lighthouse Code, original content, and finally, Google reviews. So you need to keep focusing on these six categories of things day in and day out.

Naren Arulrajah: In our case, because Google’s rules are changing and the internet rules are changing all the time, we have people dedicated to just keeping up with these changes in rules and then updating what we do and how we do it as needed. So some are changing literally on a daily, and others on a weekly and others on a monthly basis. It doesn’t matter how quickly or how slowly they’re changing—you have to stay on top. So that’s the message.

Now, as a private practice owner, you don’t have the time. Like, we spend a minimum of 30 hours a month for every single client, and it’s smartly allocated with the help of experts. So the EEAT people know what’s latest and greatest in EEAT, and they’re only doing what needs to be done today in 2025, you know, on that particular day, versus what was a good idea two weeks ago or two months ago.

So you just need to make sure your team is capable of it and staying on top of it, and you know if they’re doing a good job or not—not based on what they tell you, based on results.

Naren Arulrajah: Like, if you’re ranking for a hundred or more keywords on page one or in the top 10 results, that means they’re doing somewhat of a decent job. Because those who are ranking for the top 100 or more keywords are in the top 5% of, you know, getting traffic. So you’re getting 95% of the free traffic if you’re ranking for a hundred or more keywords. So keep that in mind.

Another way to know if you’re doing well or not—go to your Google Analytics, find out which keywords are ranking on page one, and if you can find more than a hundred relevant keywords ranking in the top 10 results, then that means you’re doing okay. But our experience is 95% of you are not. Which is why, when we take on a client, 95% of them are not doing well with SEO, and then we help them, you know, get to that 5% and then even go beyond it—like, you know, how do you rank for 200 keywords so you don’t stop at 100, you know, on page one of Google.

So you just have to stay on top of it. Like anything else in life—you know, those who are good at, you know, whatever—they just work harder, they work more. Same thing here.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, no, I like that. And I recognize—I mean, I use AI systems all the time—and I recognize they’re really, really good, but they’re not perfect. You know, they’re still sort of evolving to the extent that, um, they get better and better over time, right?

So, so when I’m thinking about AI, Naren, is a well-rounded marketing strategy still important in this day and age of this advancement of artificial intelligence?

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. It is extremely important, and I think it’s almost like non-negotiable. I’ll tell you why.

Google has been using AI, you know, going back—like I said—seven, eight years. So this idea of continuing to evolve what Google does and how it does it is not a new idea. It continues to do that.

I think what is interesting is people are trusting AI more and more and more. In other words, in the old days, they would question the AI or the software. Now they don’t. Like, think about it, right? It was not too long ago we started really, really relying on Google Maps to get us from point A to point B.

Right now, between Waymo—which is a Google-powered car—and Tesla, you are relying on driving itself. I mean, think about it. Like, the car is like a, you know, two-ton machine—a killing machine. It can hit somebody and kill somebody. You are letting this AI decide how to take you from point A to point B all on its own without you touching the, you know, steering wheel.

Naren Arulrajah: So what’s happening is AI is getting so good that people just trust it implicitly. So the fact that you show up on Google organically—they just trust you. Just like that. You know, they don’t even think, they don’t even question you anymore.

So, the power of search engines like Google—that we trust—is only increasing because we trust it even more. Of course, if it’s an ad, it’s labeled as an ad, we don’t trust it. But I’m talking about organic search. So I’m more concerned about consumers just trusting, you know, things that they read on Google more and more and more. It is what it is.

So my advice is, if you want to be in that 5%, you want to do well, then instead of complaining about those who are in the 5% and who have this unfair advantage, you get into that 5%. You try to dominate Google, and you try to rank for more and more and more keywords—without paying ad dollars.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, no, I like that. You know, my Jeep has that autopilot feat—well, they don’t call it autopilot for obvious reasons. You want people to still drive, right?

Yeah, when I first bought that with that package back in 2022, I drove from Salt Lake City to Vegas, and I was really amazed at how good it was. But there was one situation when it just all of a sudden disabled—and if I didn’t have my hands on the wheel, it would’ve been a really bad situation, you know?

So, you know, AI is helpful, but it seems like it’s just a tool, right? It’s a new tool that kind of makes our lives easier. But, you know, if I’m thinking about all this and tying it into what you’re saying about marketing, Naren…

Ben Tuinei: What should I do if I want to start showing up more and more and more on Google, you know, and start getting chosen by AI, uh, you know, and patients alike—especially for patients that are looking for certain things using AI? How do I get some love from these AI systems on Google?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, like we talked about—Google EEAT, right? That’s something, you know, we can do what we call a marketing strategy meeting, and we can audit you and tell you if your marketing company is compliant with Google EEAT. If you are, then that’s one of those AI-driven signals that Google is looking at to decide whether you should rank or not.

You know, are you getting a good score on Google Lighthouse score? Again, Google Lighthouse is looking for all the things that the AI-powered Google is looking at. And if you’re getting a low score, that means you need—you have work to do. Again, something else we do in the audit.

Naren Arulrajah: So there are a lot of things that the AI-powered Google is doing today that it didn’t do before, thanks to how much it can do because of AI. The beautiful thing is it does work for us—instead of human beings doing it manually, it just does it for us. We don’t have to even think.

So it’s a really, really, really good way to think about it—the way to think about it is to say, “Okay, am I doing all the things that Google is looking at in order to help me rank?” And if I’m ranking well on Google, I’m ranking well on every other site as well. But keep in mind, still, Google is 90% of the market share.

Naren Arulrajah: So you still want to make sure that when you’re checking, you’re checking to make sure you are ranking for 100 or more keywords on Google. And the reason is, like I said, for local search—Google has an unfair advantage. It has real-time data, reviews, all kinds of information that the other people can’t even think of catching up to.

So I would lean into Google. I would do all the fundamentals—like Google EEAT, Google Lighthouse score. And if you’re not doing well, then, you know, I think you need to fix it.

And I think the audit that I referred to—where you have some marketing expert, like we have a team that’ll spend, you know, at least six hours researching you and your competition and tell you how you are doing in all the fundamentals and how your competition is doing. If you’re doing better than your competition, keep it up. If you’re not—and 95% of the practices we review and talk to typically are not, because they don’t have dedicated people working on these things—then of course you need to fix it.

Naren Arulrajah: If you fix it, you will have an unfair advantage—the 5% that gets 95% of the free traffic, free business from Google. If you don’t, then you have to either rely on PPO plans or rely on Google Ads, which are five to ten times more expensive on a per-patient basis. Yes, you have other options—it’s just that they’re much more expensive options.

Ben Tuinei: That’s wonderful. Well, I like what you said here, Naren, about this whole world of AI. It’s kind of scary. You know, you hear about things like what Elon Musk is talking about with Neuralink and all that—it’s like, holy smokes, technology is advancing in a big way, and we just have to keep up with it, you know?

And so, appreciate your insights there, Naren. Always great interviewing you and chatting with you. Uh, can I give our listeners—

Naren Arulrajah: Can I give you the link? Yeah, you have the link that they can go to, to book the marketing strategy meeting?

Ben Tuinei: Yes, it’s https://go.insurance-untangled.com/Shownotes114MSM3 , and of course we’ll post that in the show notes. Any closing thoughts there, Naren, on that?

Naren Arulrajah: No, I think—don’t get scared of it. You know, make sure you have a team that knows what they’re doing and is leaning into it. Because it is—like, I remember this quote from Jeff Bezos. He said, you know, people come to me and say, you know, one question they keep asking more than all other questions, which is: “What’s gonna change in the next five years?”

And he’s like, that is the wrong question. The right question is: “What is not going to change in the next five years?”

What’s not going to change is AI is gonna become more and more a part of our lives—whether we like it or not. And you’re gonna have two types of human beings: those powered by AI and those not powered by AI. Those powered by AI will have unfair advantages. They will be three times more productive, three times more successful than the ones who are not powered by AI.

Naren Arulrajah: So instead of resisting it, you know, make sure that all parts of your business are leveraging it—whether it’s marketing (work with a company that’s leveraging AI for you), or whether it’s like, you know, if you can summarize a document in two minutes versus six hours—hey, I would take the two minutes versus the six hours.

You know, so anywhere you can use AI—if you want to write a letter and it would take you 30 minutes, and AI can do it for you in two minutes—let the AI write the letter, you know what I mean? You just review it.

So use AI to your advantage. Of course, like you said, Ben, you can’t trust it completely. So you have to review it, make sure it’s working, or it did what you told it to do. Because it could hallucinate, it could make mistakes. You don’t want your name associated with something wrong.

Ben Tuinei: Yep, yep. You just gotta—you gotta work through it and work with a professional. And so, yeah, I like that, Naren.

You know, so if you’re not showing up—I mean, if you really want to be visible and not be invisible, especially on Google—I highly recommend clicking on https://go.insurance-untangled.com/Shownotes114MSM5 to book a marketing strategy meeting with Ekwa today. And, you know, they can help you create a plan of action that helps you stand out, you know, and get found and chosen by AI and by real people from there.

And thank you again for this amazing episode today. I always love picking your brain on these items. And I want to take a minute to thank our listeners for joining us again on another amazing episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast.

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