AI search
We put 12 Australian patient questions to four AI engines on 12 September 2026 and classified all 427 citations.
The easy part
Perplexity cited a clinic's own site in 12 of 12 answers. Claude in 11. ChatGPT in 9. Google AI Overviews in 8. Across the four, 167 distinct Australian clinic websites were cited.
The advice everyone gives
A provider's own website took 60.3% to 71.7% of all citations. Directories, comparison sites and insurers took 6.2% to 21.3%.
The surprise
Google AI Overviews cited a directory in 6.2% of cases, the lowest of the four. Perplexity was highest at 21.3%, and still cited clinic sites three times more often.
The hard part
Of the 167 clinic sites cited, 124 appeared on exactly one engine. Twenty-seven on two, ten on three, six on all four. Winning one race says almost nothing about the other three.
And yet
In 11 of the 11 comparable questions, at least two engines cited the same clinic. A small core most engines agree on, wrapped in a long tail unique to each.
Where Google said nothing
Including the most commercial question in the set, which asked for the best physiotherapist in a named Sydney suburb. On those, the ordinary blue links were the whole answer.
The error worth knowing
Seven citations pointed outside Australia, all from one engine. A Hobart back-pain question returned four US practices. A Newcastle NSW sleep study returned the Newcastle upon Tyne NHS trust.
Our own error rate
The automatic classifier flagged 212 domains as clinic sites. A human opened every one and moved 45. YouTube was in there. So was PubMed. Every figure above is the hand-corrected one.
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