Key facts
- Five prompts were run once each on 2026-09-26 through gpt-5.1 with the web search tool on: best dentist for dental implants in Toronto, emergency dentist open today in Calgary, Invisalign cost and who to see in Vancouver, pediatric dentist recommendations in Chicago, and best cosmetic dentist in Dallas.
- The model attached 31 citations across the five answers. The Invisalign cost prompt attached none and answered from general knowledge about treatment tiers and payment options.
- The Toronto implant prompt cited seven hosts and none was a dental practice: two Toronto dentist rating and listing sites, a clinic finder, a best-dentists directory, an insurer's provider search, the federal dental care plan site and a cosmetic-procedure review site.
- The Calgary emergency dentist prompt cited six hosts and all six were dental clinics' own websites, and the answer listed clinic names with areas of the city, hours and phone numbers drawn from those pages.
- The Chicago pediatric prompt cited the American Dental Association's find-a-dentist directory, a university dental school, an insurer and a Reddit thread; the Dallas cosmetic prompt cited a city magazine's directory, a reviews platform, a ratings site and one dentist's own site.
What we asked and how the study works
This is a citation study rather than a naming study. On 2026-09-26 we sent five dental prompts, one run each, to gpt-5.1 with its web search tool switched on, and recorded every URL the model attached to its answer as a citation. We then sorted each cited host by type using our own rules: a business's own site, a directory or review site, a news, reference or government site, Reddit, or social. The sorting is ours and can be argued with; the hosts themselves are simply what the model attached.
The five prompts were written the way a patient would type them: best dentist for dental implants in Toronto, emergency dentist open today in Calgary, Invisalign cost and who to see in Vancouver, pediatric dentist recommendations in Chicago, and best cosmetic dentist in Dallas.
What each prompt cited
Toronto implants: seven citations, all to aggregators. The hosts were bestdentists.ca, bestinhood.com, clinicfinder.ca, torontodentalrating.com, realself.com, an insurer's provider search at providersearch.sunlife.ca, and canadiandentalcare.com, the federal dental care plan. The answer named a handful of practices and specialists drawn from those pages, then gave a checklist for choosing an implant provider. No clinic site was cited.
Calgary emergency dentist: six citations, all to clinics' own sites, dentistryatsavanna.ca, oasissmiledental.com, royaloaksmiles.ca, sunridgedental.ca, west17avedental.ca and a landing page of dentrixdentalcare.com. The answer listed clinics by quadrant with hours and phone numbers taken from those pages.
Vancouver Invisalign cost: no citations. The model answered from general knowledge about mild, moderate and complex cases, specialists versus general dentists, and payment options, and told the reader to compare written quotes.
Chicago pediatric: ten citations, mostly to findadentist.ada.org, the ADA's directory, plus the University of Illinois Chicago dental school, an insurer at bcbsil.com and a Reddit thread. Dallas cosmetic: seven citations, to directory.dmagazine.com, reviews.birdeye.com, yably.com and one dentist's own site.
The pattern: the question decides the source
When the prompt asked for the best provider of a high-value procedure, implants or cosmetic work, the model reached for third-party lists: rating sites, directories, a magazine's list, an insurer's search. When the prompt was urgent and specific, an emergency dentist open today, it went straight to clinic websites that publish hours and a phone number, because that is where the answer lives. When the prompt was about cost, it cited nothing and spoke in general terms.
By our sorting, 21 of the 31 citations were directory or review sites, seven were practices' own sites, two were reference or government sites and one was Reddit. Six of the seven own-site citations came from the single emergency prompt. A practice that only looks at its own site's traffic will miss that for the best-dentist questions the model is not reading practice sites at all.
What a dental practice can do with this
Three things follow. First, be present and accurate on the sources the model actually cited: the ADA directory for US practices, the provincial and insurer provider searches in Canada, the clinic finders and rating sites that appeared, with the practice name, address and services written the same way everywhere. Second, publish the pages that answer urgent questions plainly, hours today, emergency availability, the phone number, the quadrant of the city, because those are the pages the model cited directly. Third, put the implant and cosmetic checklist answers on the site, who places the implant, imaging, systems used, what a quote includes, so that when a browsing model looks for a source on those questions, a practice page is there to cite.
SearchPod builds those pages for dental clients inside the advertising rules that apply to regulated health professions, keeps the directory listings consistent, and tracks which prompts cite the practice with a fixed prompt panel.
What this cannot tell you
One model, one run per prompt, one date, five prompts. The citations would differ on another day, with another model, or with a slightly different question, and the host sorting is our own. The practices and specialists the model named are recorded here only as what it said; nothing on this page verifies or endorses any of them, and nothing here is dental advice.
Related questions
Sometimes. Six of the seven own-site citations came from the emergency dentist prompt, where the model pulled hours and phone numbers from clinic pages. The best-dentist prompts for implants and cosmetic work cited directories, rating sites and an insurer's search instead.
The ADA's find-a-dentist directory for Chicago, and for Toronto a set of Canadian listing and rating sites plus an insurer's provider search and the federal dental care plan site. For Dallas it cited a city magazine's directory and a reviews platform.
The model's reasoning is not visible. It answered from general knowledge about case complexity and payment options and told the reader to compare quotes, without attaching any source.
By our own rules, sorting each host as a business's own site, a directory or review site, a news, reference or government site, Reddit or social. The rules are simple pattern matches and can be argued with; the cited hosts themselves are exactly what the model attached.
Be listed accurately on the directories the model actually used, publish plain pages for urgent questions such as hours and emergency care, and answer the procedure checklists on the site so a browsing model has a practice page to cite. SearchPod tracks this with a fixed prompt panel.
Sources
one model with web search, one run per prompt, one date; host types are sorted by SearchPod's own rules; names are recorded as the model wrote them and are not verified or endorsed; nothing here is dental advice; SearchPod sells AI visibility work.
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