Perplexity is not Google. It is not ChatGPT. It is not Google Maps. It is something that did not exist in meaningful form three years ago and now handles millions of healthcare and service queries every month. When The Dental Index began mapping which dental practices appeared in Perplexity responses versus ChatGPT responses, the overlap was only partial, a practice that had optimised exclusively for ChatGPT inclusion sometimes appeared strongly on one platform and not the other. The reason is structural: Perplexity draws from a different index, weights different signals, and constructs its responses differently. A practice that does not understand those differences is leaving half the AI search channel uncovered.
Perplexity and ChatGPT are not interchangeable. They pull from different sources, weight different signals, and cite different practices. Owning one does not mean owning the other.
Run the Perplexity test separately from ChatGPT
Go to perplexity.ai. Search for your top procedure plus your city: 'best dentist for implants in [city]', 'dental implant specialist [city]', 'who is the best cosmetic dentist in [city].' Record which practices appear and whether your practice is named. Then run the same searches in ChatGPT. Map the overlap. If you appear in one but not the other, the gap tells you exactly which signal is missing.
Build substantive procedure pages, Perplexity's primary differentiating signal
Perplexity weights website content depth more heavily than ChatGPT does. A procedure page that covers the clinical process, candidacy criteria, cost range, recovery timeline, and patient outcomes in genuine depth, not 300 words of templated copy, gives Perplexity's crawler material to extract and cite. Each of your top 2–3 procedures should have a dedicated page of at least 800 words of original, specific content. These pages also improve Google rankings, making them dual-purpose investments.
Publish articles that answer the exact questions Perplexity surfaces for dental queries
Perplexity excels at answering research questions, 'how long do dental implants last', 'what is the success rate of dental implants at 60', 'how does the All-on-4 process work.' Practices that have published articles answering these questions with specific, data-backed content are cited by Perplexity as authoritative sources. The Dental Index content framework targets these exact questions: each article is structured to answer a specific patient question that Perplexity handles poorly with generic content.
Ensure your Google Knowledge Graph data is accurate and complete
Perplexity uses Google Knowledge Graph data for local business verification. This data is drawn from your GBP. An incomplete or inconsistent GBP creates gaps in Perplexity's ability to confirm your practice's identity, location, and service focus. The GBP completeness work you do for ChatGPT inclusion directly benefits your Perplexity visibility, the signals overlap on this dimension even though the web crawl sources diverge.
Add a structured data layer that both platforms can parse
Both ChatGPT and Perplexity benefit from structured data on your website, specifically LocalBusiness schema, MedicalBusiness schema, and FAQPage schema. These make your practice's identity and service offerings machine-readable for AI crawlers regardless of which underlying index the platform uses. A practice with complete structured data is readable by every AI search platform simultaneously. A practice without it requires each platform to infer your data from unstructured content, reducing citation confidence.