So who is the best facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills?
Now, while, we may care about that answer specifically, actually what I’m more interested in is how we come to that answer and where we’re asking. Because traditionally people would ask that question of Google. And we would get 10 results on the first page. And we would know how Google would choose each of those results. We know their system.
But increasingly people are asking LLMs, AI assistants, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, these same questions. We know that about 11% of Americans in a self-report are using AI every day. And it’s in fact probably much more since Google is now offering blended search results with Gemini, aI generated results at the top of their traditional search results. So they’re answering that question and it’s important that we know why and how they’re making those determinations so that we can show up in that place.
How Traditional Search Engines Determine Rankings
Traditionally when Google would give you rankings for a question like who’s the best facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. We know that they’re doing it using these two pillars. We know this because they’ve been doing this for 25 years. This is, this was their innovation 25 years ago that made them better than every other search result. Because they took topical relevance, that websites are talking about the things that want to rank for it. So they’re talking about the best facial plastic surgery in Beverly Hills. But then they took this other part, which we call authority, which was counting all the links coming into website, all the backlinks is what we call them. And if one website had more backlinks than another, they were considered to be more authoritative.
So for a given search, best facial plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills. If two surgeons are equally textually relevant and one of them has greater authority, more backlinks, that surgeon is going to rank higher.
There’s a lot more factors that Google has sort of added over the years and refinements of this, but essentially it’s, these two things are kind of the most important parts. And we understand how it works. It may not be easy to rank for the best facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. But we know how they determine those rankings.
Suddenly with the LLMs with AI, things are kind of up in the air again. Like people are asking AI these same questions they would do for search. But how they’re making these determinations, where are they getting their data? We’re less sure. So I think it behooves us to talk a little bit about it to make sure that we’re doing what we can to show up in these results. Because again, people are asking these questions of these AIs, and they’re treating it like they do search results. People are. I think like the AI, because when they have questions in particular, it gives them answers. It doesn’t just give them a list of websites.
How LLMs Derive Answers
LLMs get their data by scraping the entire web by aggregating data from websites, blogs, directories, Google, Yelp, in healthcare realself, healthgrades. And then also social media, news articles, you know patient reviews, like niche platforms. All over the place. Google is doing this too, and looking at basically everything. But again, Google was, in terms of their ranking, relying on relevance and authority, whereas the LLMs, they just kind of ingest everything, and then synthesize it, in kind of an opaque way. And the people who make these things, like the people at open AI at Google, don’t actually know what the AI is thinking, like how it’s making its decisions. Which is kind of scary. It’s this black box. So.
When asked ChatGPT, this is the answer that it gave me: “LLMs prioritize content that is consistently visible across diverse platforms blending data points into its responses.” So.
I think the takeaway from this and the understanding that this is a black box, how it’s making its terminations, but knowing that it is ingesting everything, tells us that basically we need to diversify where we’re putting our content. It’s not enough to be just in one or two places.
Multi-Channel Content Diversification
Multichannel content diversification is essential.
The AI needs to see you everywhere. Being present on many different platforms. Is going to increase the chances that you are seen by the AI. Because they’re scraping stuff from different places. They have access to different things, and we don’t really know on the outside, they have licensing agreements, you know, this- it’s kind of changing and sort of from one company to another, we don’t really know what they’re getting. So, for example, a plastic surgeon who is visible on their own website, on Instagram, on Yelp, on realself, is going to be more likely to appear in the LLM than one who’s maybe only prioritizing content in, you know, one or two or three of those places.
This redundancy, which it can feel redundant, reinforces credibility. Content spread across platforms creates a like a digital echo. And that can signal authority. You can imagine this, like in human terms, you know, you hear things, you hear something twice and maybe you remember it. You hear it three times and it starts sounding like more credible. By seeing consistent, particularly positive, and this one, we’re talking about reviews a little bit as well, content about a practice in multiple places, is going to reinforce these credibility signals for the LLM.
And then finally this futureproofs against algorithm shifts. And the same has always been true for Google. Because Google tweaks its algorithms from regularly. But with Google for some time, the algorithm changes have really been refinements. Because I think Google understands that their changes impact millions of businesses. So even when they make tiny tweaks, it can be felt very strongly by, you know, SEOs and by the companies that we represent. Because that might drop you down in the rankings or drop a channel that you’ve been optimizing down the rankings. For example, like Yelp used to- Yelp results used to appear at the top of Google results for a lot of local searches. And then one day, like, It didn’t. And it was like a few spots down or even, you know, down the page further. And if you were putting all of your eggs in the Yelp basket and people were finding your Yelp profile via Google search. Then when that change happened, you were probably losing a lot of traffic or a lot of visibility.
So for Google this has always been true that you want to diversify because of algorithm shifts. But for the LLMs where their swings in the way their algorithms work are much greater because we don’t know how they work and because they’re figuring it out. And each company kind of does it really differently from one to the next. So when they make a change, like they might just lose access to the data. From one of these, one of these review sites or from whoever. And if you’re putting your content there, then you’re invisible to them. So future-proof against algorithm shifts.
Practical Steps to Diversify Content
The key is to diversify again, where we’re putting content. The way that I like to do that is to create core content and then repurpose it. So I start with high quality video content generally. And then I adapted for many channels. So it would be: upload it to YouTube, embed that into a blog with a transcript, cut it up into smaller clips for Instagram, for Facebook, maybe for TikTok, with generated text that’s like specific for each of these channels.
So, you know, individual posts texts for Instagram. You could do like for a newsletter and link it back to your blog with generated text for that. And then that gets mirrored on the MailChimp or Constant Contact site. So getting into lots and lots of places. And then if appropriate, using any responses on like Reddit high-quality responses, questions on Reddit, or, you know, forum posts on realself, that sort of thing.
And then also it’s important to make sure that the reviews that you’re getting are also diversified. Because the reviews are also going to be a signal of credibility and authority. And it’s tempting to just try and get reviews on, say, google business. Because that shows up someone Googles your name. Or you know, services you want to rank for, best facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. And if you’re coming up in the Google local pack, in the three pack, It’s going to show your reviews there and your Google business reviews are what create that score. With the LLMs, having reviews on Yelp and reviews on realself, on healthgrades and other places, probably is a good idea to be thinking about. Encouraging reviews in those places as well. And then of course, maintaining, keeping up to date, active those profiles on all those sites.
ROI of Multi-Channel Visibility
So the ROI of multi-channel visibility. Appearing in multiple locations increases your chances of being part of these synthesized AI answers. And we’re going to do that by efficiently creating content. I actually like to use aI tools in this whole content creation process. And it’s at the beginning, we use AI to ideate, to come up with topics and then AI to generate outlines. And then we record video. Original human, authentic content based on these prompts, from the AI. Record that. Cut it using AI tools, make it super efficient. Generate text to go along with it for different platforms. Again, using AI. So we’re using AI- hybrid approach at each of these steps, in order to stay ahead of these changes with AI. And that’s just how technology works, I suppose.
And then this is going to give you a competitive edge. Because if your competitors aren’t doing this yet, they will, you know, eventually just out of necessity as more people realize that their prospective patients, clients, customers are using AI to find their services. So they’re going to have to use these things too.
In conclusion AI assistants are changing the way that people find information online. And if you want your business to show up in those answers, then we need to be thinking about where the AI’s get their information from and how we can be in those places. And I find that an efficient content creation process, creating one piece of content and then putting into lots of channels is a great way to do that.
So we talk a lot about that here and I’ll talk about it more in future pieces. So uh, stay tuned.