Your Next Orthotic Patient Is Asking ChatGPT, Not Just Google: Are You Showing Up?
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In our last article, we talked about how 3D scanning turns the orthotic consultation into a demonstration the patient can see for themselves. Today I want to back up to the very first step in the journey: how a patient finds you in the first place, because that step is changing faster right now than it has in fifteen years.
For most of your career, "getting found" meant ranking on Google. A patient typed "heel pain doctor near me," scrolled the results, and clicked. That still happens. But in 2026, a growing share of patients never see ten blue links at all. They type their question into ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's own AI Overview, and they get a single, confident answer that names a few practices and moves on. If your practice isn't in that answer, you don't exist for that patient.
This isn't a someday problem. Google AI Overviews already appear on a large and rising share of health-related searches, summarizing the answer before the patient ever reaches your website. And patients are increasingly asking tools like ChatGPT and Gemini things like "do I need custom orthotics for plantar fasciitis?" or "who makes custom orthotics near me?" The machine answers. The question for you is whether it answers with your name.
How AI Decides Who to Recommend
Here's the good news: the AI tools aren't pulling names out of thin air. They're reading the same signals you've been building all along — just weighting them differently. When an AI assistant decides which practice to mention, it's looking for credibility, consistency, and trust. In practice, that means four things.
First, a complete and accurate Google Business Profile. The AI leans heavily on structured, verified data, and your profile is the cleanest version of that data about your practice. Second, consistency. Your name, address, and phone number need to match everywhere they appear online — your website, your profile, directories. Mismatches make the AI distrust the record. Third, reviews that say something specific. An assistant summarizing "best place for custom orthotics" pays attention to reviews that actually mention orthotics and the conditions you treat. Fourth, content that answers real patient questions in plain language.
Marketers have a clunky name for this — they call it "answer engine optimization," or they talk about E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness). You don't need the jargon. You just need to be the practice that has clearly, visibly, and consistently demonstrated that it knows orthotics and biomechanics cold.
Why This Actually Favors You
A lot of podiatrists hear "AI is changing search" and assume it's one more thing stacked against the small practice. It's the opposite. AI assistants reward depth and specificity, and that's exactly where a focused biomechanical practice wins over a big-box clinic or a direct-to-consumer insert brand.
When your website has a real page explaining what custom orthotics treat, how your 3D scanning process works, and why a device built from a patient's specific foot structure is different from a drugstore insert, you're feeding the AI exactly the kind of substantive, expert content it's built to surface. A practice using FootID Pro and the Root orthotic design process has a genuinely more sophisticated story to tell than "we sell arch supports" — and the AI can tell the difference when that story is written down somewhere it can read.
The direct-to-consumer brands optimize for volume and price. You can't out-shout them. But you can out-specify them, and specificity is what these tools reward.
Write for the Question, Not the Keyword
The old way of thinking about search was keywords — cramming "custom orthotics [your city]" onto a page. The new way is questions. Patients ask AI tools in full sentences, so the practices that win are the ones whose content directly answers those sentences.
Think about what your orthotic patients actually ask: "Are custom orthotics worth the money?" "How long do custom orthotics last?" "What's the difference between custom orthotics and the ones at the pharmacy?" "Can orthotics fix flat feet?" Every one of those is a page or a paragraph on your website waiting to be written. When you answer the question clearly and accurately, you become a source the AI can quote — and being quoted is the new being ranked.
What You Can Do This Week
Open ChatGPT or Google's AI Overview and run the searches your patients would run: "custom orthotics near me," "best podiatrist for orthotics in [your city]," "do I need custom orthotics for heel pain." See whether you're mentioned, and notice who is.
Then pick one patient question you answer out loud every week and write a short, plain-English answer to it on your website — one page, three or four paragraphs, no jargon. That single page does double duty: it helps patients, and it gives the AI something credible to cite.
Finally, do the unglamorous check. Make sure your practice name, address, and phone number are identical across your website and your Google Business Profile. It takes ten minutes, and it's one of the strongest trust signals these systems use.
The patients haven't changed — they still want a local expert they can trust with their feet. What's changed is the middleman. Make sure that when the machine answers, it's sending those patients to you.
