ProximityRanker
AI Search for Gastroenterologists
Patients Ask AI About Their Symptoms Before They Choose a Gastroenterologist
Months of heartburn or a family history of colon cancer sends patients to an AI first. We make yours the name it gives.
Get your free auditNo cost, no obligation, no lock-in contract.
See it live
What your patients see when they ask AI
Ask the three engines your patients use, and watch who they name. This is what a cited answer looks like when your practice is the one built to be quoted.
which gastroenterologist should I see for a colonoscopy near me?
ChatGPT answer
CitedYour Practice · ColonoscopyYour Practice · Screening & Prep
A live example. The tabs cycle through how each engine answers; a real practice is named and cited the same way.
What it is
What is AI search optimization for gastroenterologists?
AI search optimization, or AEO, is the work of getting your gastroenterology practice named and cited when a patient asks an AI engine who to see or what a symptom means. It structures your profile, your condition and procedure pages, your reviews and your practice identity so ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity can quote you directly as the answer.
- Entity and identity foundation
- Quotable condition and procedure pages
- Structured answers and schema
- Reviews and third-party validation
- AI answer monitoring
- Reporting you can act on
Why this matters now
The search your patients do has already changed
Search is moving from a page of links to a single answer. This is the shift your practice is being sorted by, whether or not anyone is optimising for it.
Industry figures from third-party 2026 research, directional and about the search shift itself, not this practice's results.
Recent results
Real numbers from recent work
Real Search Console and Bing screenshots. Practice names stay private, the numbers are untouched.
Gastroenterology clinic
196.8K AI citations across 123 pages, surfaced and cited by AI assistants.
Psychiatry practice
123K impressions and 550 clicks in 28 days, at an average position of 8.8.
Gastroenterology clinic
1.94M impressions and 10.9K clicks in 3 months, holding an average position of 8.5.
Orthodontic practice
108K impressions and 807 clicks in 28 days, at an average position of 14.5.
Orthodontic practice
366 calls straight from the Business Profile in one month, up 13.3% year on year.
Gastroenterology clinic
175 calls straight from the Business Profile in one month, up 65.4% year on year.
Pain management clinic
48.4K impressions in 28 days at an average position of 10.9.
Law firm, new build
A brand new website to 104K impressions in its first 3 months, and still climbing.
Gastroenterology clinic
196.8K AI citations across 123 pages, surfaced and cited by AI assistants.
Psychiatry practice
123K impressions and 550 clicks in 28 days, at an average position of 8.8.
Gastroenterology clinic
1.94M impressions and 10.9K clicks in 3 months, holding an average position of 8.5.
Orthodontic practice
108K impressions and 807 clicks in 28 days, at an average position of 14.5.
Orthodontic practice
366 calls straight from the Business Profile in one month, up 13.3% year on year.
Gastroenterology clinic
175 calls straight from the Business Profile in one month, up 65.4% year on year.
Pain management clinic
48.4K impressions in 28 days at an average position of 10.9.
Law firm, new build
A brand new website to 104K impressions in its first 3 months, and still climbing.
One consistent identity
The same practice name, address, specialty and physician list everywhere an engine might look. When your details disagree across directories, a model cannot be confident which gastroenterology practice you are, so it names one it can.
A real page per condition and procedure
Colonoscopy, IBS, GERD, Crohn's, fatty liver, each on its own page with the city in the heading and a plain answer near the top. A model quotes a specific page, never a Services list with ten procedures in a row.
Named, credentialed physicians
Health is the content AI treats most carefully. Board certification, fellowship and a named author on each clinical page are the trust signals that let an engine cite you over a content mill that cannot examine anyone.
Answers structured to be lifted
Medical and FAQ schema, a 40-to-60-word answer under each heading, and question-shaped subheads. This is the difference between a page an engine has to summarise and one it can quote word for word.
Reviews in patient language
Engines pull the words patients actually use into their summaries. Steady reviews that mention the procedure, the prep and the doctor by name feed the exact phrasing an AI reaches for when it describes you.
Freshness it can trust
A visible review date and current clinical content tell an engine the page is maintained. Stale pages get passed over for YMYL questions, where being wrong carries a cost the model is built to avoid.
What we do
What the gastroenterology AI search work actually covers
Entity and identity foundation
- One canonical practice identity built and pushed consistent across every directory, map and health aggregator an engine reads
- Each gastroenterologist established as their own entity, linked to the practice, with credentials attached
- Organization and Physician schema so a model can resolve exactly who and what you are
- Your name, specialty and locations reconciled so no two sources disagree
Quotable condition and procedure pages
- A real page per procedure and condition, each opening with a short extractable answer
- The city in the heading, so a near-me question resolves to a specific location
- Question-shaped subheads that mirror how patients actually phrase symptoms to an AI
- Prep, cost and insurance answered plainly, because those are the follow-up questions engines get asked
Structured answers and schema
- MedicalClinic, Physician and FAQ schema mirrored to the visible text on every clinical page
- Answers formatted so ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity can lift them without rewriting
- Nested schema that ties a condition page, its author and the practice into one signal
- Speakable and article markup where it strengthens extraction
Reviews and third-party validation
- A review strategy timed to the moment a procedure goes well, in patients' own words
- Presence on the third-party sources these engines actually cite, kept accurate
- Citation language mined from real reviews and worked into the pages engines quote
- The independent signals that let an AI trust you over an unexaminable content site
AI answer monitoring
- Your key patient questions checked in ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity every month
- Whether you are named, which page is cited, and who is being named instead
- AI referral traffic separated out of Direct, where most of it hides by default
- A record of where you are gaining or losing ground in the answers over time
Reporting you can act on
- The engines you appear in, the questions you win, and the pages doing the citing
- AI citations and referral sessions traced back toward booked procedures
- What moved this month, what is next, and the reasoning behind both
- A monthly call where you can ask why, not just read a dashboard
Meet the founder
SEO and AI search, led by the founder himself
I’m Ashikur Rahman. I’ve spent the better part of a decade in SEO, most recently as Partner and SEO Manager at Doctor Rank, a medical and legal SEO agency I helped found. Every plan, every strategy and every client win there ran through me and my team. Proximity Ranker is the next step, my own agency, built the way I’ve always believed this work should be done.
I keep it small on purpose. We stay selective about who we sign and cap how many clients we take on, so nobody ends up with a template pulled from a drawer. We build your strategy around your specialty, your city and your goals. My own background is in law, an LL.B and an LL.M, and that turns out to be a real edge in YMYL niches like medicine and law, where Google and AI reward genuine expertise and trust.
Hire Proximity Ranker and you work with me, not an account manager. I look over every strategy, every author block and every AI search recommendation before it ships. Search has moved past ten blue links. Your next clients are already asking Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity who to trust, and earning a place inside those answers is the work I care about most.
Book a call and you talk to me directly, not an account manager.
How it runs
The first 90 days for a gastroenterology practice, from invisible to cited
No lock-in contract. AI visibility is measurable, so you will see whether you are being named more often, on real patient questions, not asked to take it on faith.
- Day 0
See what AI says about you now
We ask the engines the questions your patients ask and record exactly what comes back: whether you are named, which page is cited, who is named instead, and where your identity disagrees with itself across the web. It returns as a prioritised list, worst gaps first. No charge and no obligation.
AI auditCitation checkIdentity gapsCompetitor gap - Month 1
Fix the identity and build the pages
The heavy month. One consistent practice identity reconciled everywhere an engine looks, a quotable page for every procedure and condition that lacks one, and schema for the practice and each physician so a model can resolve who you are.
Entity cleanupNew pagesSchemaCredentials - Month 2
Make every answer liftable
The foundation is in, so now we make the site quotable. Short extractable answers under question-shaped headings, review language worked into the pages, and presence built on the third-party sources these engines actually cite.
Extractable answersReview languageCitationsValidation - Month 3
See your name inside the answers
This is usually when it shows: your practice named in ChatGPT and AI Overviews on the questions that matter, more pages cited, and AI referral traffic pulled out of Direct so you can finally see it. We report on all of it.
Named and citedAI trafficMonitoringReporting
How is AI search different from regular SEO?
Regular SEO earns a ranking; AI search earns a mention. An engine does not hand a patient ten links, it gives one answer and names a few practices inside it. That runs on different signals: a consistent identity, pages a model can quote, credentialed authors and the third-party sources it trusts. The two overlap, but optimising for a blue-link ranking does not automatically get you cited.
Do patients really ask ChatGPT which gastroenterologist to see?
Increasingly, yes, and even more often they ask about the symptom first. Someone with months of heartburn or a family history of colon cancer asks an AI what it might be and who to see long before they book. If the engine names three practices and yours is not one of them, you never enter the decision, and you never learn it happened.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will name our practice?
No, and anyone who guarantees a specific engine output is not being straight with you. What we can do is make your practice the easiest one in your area to cite, then measure it: we track your key questions across the engines every month and show you where you are named and where you are not. The trend is what we hold ourselves to.
We already rank well on Google. Isn't that enough?
It helps, because some engines read Google's results, but it is not the same job. A page can rank first and still never be quoted, because it is written to be clicked rather than lifted. And when Google answers with an AI Overview above your ranking, the click you earned can disappear into a summary that names someone else. Being cited in that summary is the work.
How do you measure whether this is working?
Three ways. We test your patient questions in each engine on a schedule and log whether you are named and cited. We separate AI referral traffic out of Direct, where most of it lands invisibly. And we tie both back toward booked procedures. You see the answers moving, not just a promise that they will.
Is it safe to publish AI-focused medical content?
It is content held to the strictest standard, which is exactly why it works when done right. A named physician as author, a clear review date, no diagnosis on the page and nothing you would not say in a first appointment. Handled that way, it is the highest-trust content on your site, and trust is precisely what an engine is selecting for.
Does this replace our SEO, or run alongside it?
Alongside. The same pages, schema and identity work serve both, which is why we do them together rather than selling them as two invoices. Strong condition pages earn rankings and citations at once. Where they diverge is format and validation, and that is the part specific to getting named by an engine.
How long before we start getting cited?
Identity and schema fixes can change what engines say within a month or two, because those are the gaps that most often keep you out. Being consistently named on competitive condition questions takes longer, usually three to six months, as the pages mature and the third-party signals build. Anyone promising instant AI dominance is selling something.
Do you lock us into a long contract?
No. There is no lock-in and leaving is easy. We would rather earn the next month by showing you your name appearing in more answers than bind you to a year of paperwork.
What does the free audit include?
We ask the engines your patients' real questions and show you exactly what they say today: whether you are named, which pages are cited, who is named instead, and where your identity is working against you across the web. Back inside 24 to 48 hours with nothing owed.
Free audit
See what AI says about your gastroenterology practice
We ask the engines your patients' real questions and show you what they say today: who is named, which pages are cited, and where you are invisible. Back with you in 24 to 48 hours, at no cost.
Get your free auditNo cost, no obligation, no lock-in contract.