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ChatGPT and Claude cited Dental.me as a source for dentist recommendations in 11 of the 50 largest U.S. cities. Source: Dental.me AI Dentist Study, October 2026.
AI Put a 3-Star Dentist on Baltimore's "Best" List. Here's What It Said About Your City.
This study shows those answers can change from one assistant to the next, and even from one minute to the next. Choosing a dentist is a health decision.”
LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, October 19, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- More Americans are asking AI assistants to recommend a dentist. A new Dental.me study asked the three most popular assistants, ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude, the same simple question in each of the 50 largest U.S. cities: "Who are the best dentists there?" The three assistants named 560 different "best" dental practices between them. Only 30 appeared on all three lists.— Spencer Whiteclaw, Head Research Analyst, Dental.me
The study found that the answer a patient gets depends heavily on which assistant they ask, and even on when they ask it.
The study also recorded the websites the assistants cited as sources. ChatGPT and Claude cited Dental.me in 11 of the 50 cities: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Miami, Sacramento, San Diego and Washington, D.C. In Boston, Claude described its picks as "the top-ranked Boston offices on Dental.me."
Key findings
Three assistants, three different answers. Across the 50 cities, 76% of the practices recommended were named by only one of the three assistants. Only 30 practices in the entire country appeared on all three lists.
No consensus in 28 cities. In 28 of the 50 largest cities, not a single practice was recommended by all three assistants. In Dallas, Tucson and Virginia Beach, the three assistants did not name even one practice in common.
Ask again, get a different answer. When researchers asked the identical question a second time in the 10 largest cities, 38% of the recommended practices changed. In Chicago, Gemini's second answer replaced all five of its first picks. In Dallas, ChatGPT and Claude each kept only one.
A 3.1-star practice on a "best" list. Asked for the best dentists in Baltimore, Gemini answered with "5 highly-rated dental practices", one of which carries a 3.1-star Google rating from 24 reviews. Dental.me's own data lists 49 Baltimore practices with ratings of 4.8 stars or higher and more than 100 reviews.
"Patients are turning to AI the way they used to turn to a neighbor for a recommendation," said Spencer Whiteclaw, Head Research Analyst at Dental.me. "But this study shows those answers can change from one assistant to the next, and even from one minute to the next. Choosing a dentist is a health decision. Patients deserve a consistent, transparent way to compare their options."
Why it matters
AI assistants are quickly becoming a front door to local health care. The study shows that their recommendations vary widely from one assistant to the next, and from one ask to the next.
City-by-city results
The full results for all 50 cities, showing what ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude recommended in each, are published on Dental.me together with the complete methodology:
https://dental.me/dental-market-data/ai-dentist-recommendations/
About the study
When and where: researchers asked ChatGPT (chatgpt.com), Gemini (gemini.google.com) and Claude (claude.ai) the same question on October 16, 2026, in each of the 50 most populous U.S. cities, for example: "I'm looking for a dentist in Los Angeles, California. Who are the best dentists there? Please name 5 specific dental practices with their phone numbers."
Clean sessions: each assistant was used in a fresh session with no prior history (ChatGPT temporary chat, Claude incognito chat).
How picks were compared: practices were matched across assistants by name and phone number.
Ratings: star ratings and review counts were checked against each practice's public Google listing on the same day.
Repeat test: the second round in the 10 largest cities was run the same day.
Sources cited: researchers also put the same question to Claude with web search turned on, 8 times in each of the 50 cities, and recorded every website it used as a source. Together with the ChatGPT sessions, this identified the 11 cities where an assistant cited Dental.me.
Scope: the study measures what AI assistants recommend. It does not evaluate the clinical quality of any dental practice.
About Dental.me
Dental.me is a national dental directory that scores more than 245,000 U.S. dental practices with the Dental.me Score, a transparent rating built from public records and patient review data. It uses the same published method for every practice, so the same question returns the same answer for everyone. Dental.me has earned over 1,000,000 Google impressions, and its AI citations are up 2,525% in the last 30 days.
Media contact: Spencer Whiteclaw, press@dental.me
For more information, visit Dental.me.
AI dentist study (all 50 cities): https://dental.me/dental-market-data/ai-dentist-recommendations/
Dental.me Score methodology: https://dental.me/how-we-rank/
Dental.me: https://dental.me/
Spencer Whiteclaw
Dental.me
press@dental.me
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