Dos and Don’ts in the World of AI Search and Zero-Click Search

Gary Takacs: This is The Thriving Dentist Show with Gary Takacs, where we help you develop your ideal dental practice, one that provides personal, professional, and financial satisfaction.

Gary Takacs: Welcome to another episode of The Thriving Dentist Show. I’m Gary TKIs, your podcast co-host, and founder of The Thriving Dentist Show. We have a great episode for you today. This one’s a little bit nerdy and technical, and we think you’re gonna love it. It’s dos and don’ts in the world of AI search and zero click search. You’re about to be drinking from a fire hose when it comes to what’s going on in the world of digital marketing right now. excited to bring this information to you. But before we do, I have a couple quick announcements to make. The first announcement is that coming up shortly after publishing this episode, we have a thriving Dentist virtual Summit. So it’s virtual you can attend from the comfort of your home or office, have no travel expense or travel inconvenience.

Gary Takacs: and this particular summit is on May 28th. Shortly after this episode’s published from six to 9:00 PM It’s three hours. We’ll have some keynotes, we’ll have some panel discussions, we’ll have some conversations, and it’s all about how dental practices can use AI to increase case acceptance and production in 2026. Come join us. It’s three hours. You’ll get three hours of CE as long as you stay through the entire course. You’ll get three hours of CE. And we are offering this at no tuition. We do that as a courtesy for you in appreciation for your listenership. You do have to register, so be sure to go to thriving dentist.com/events and grab your seat. I look forward to seeing you on May 28th for this next Thriving Dentist virtual event. Now, the next announcement I have is we have a returning guest, you know, you’ve heard his voice before. It’s Dr. Pavel Krastev. And, he’s become a wonderful friend of the podcast. I also know that he happens to have exquisite taste in automobiles, ’cause he happens to like the same brand that I do, he’s a great leader. He’s got a great clinical tip for you. It is titled A Simple Documentation Tip to Handle Loose Implant Restorations with Confidence. with no further ado, here’s Dr. Pavel Krastev, with, simple documentation tip to handle loose implant restorations with confidence.

Dr. Pavel Krastev: Hello, dear friends and colleagues, and, thanks again to the Thriving Dentist Organization for giving me this opportunity yet again to share a clinical tip that I think can benefit your practices. So, today’s tip is going to be, related to implant dentistry and more specifically to, the reconstruction aspect of implant dentistry. And I will share a very basic thing that I do that helps me tremendously, in the rare event where this occurs, which I will explain momentarily. So, I think as dentists who restore implants and who place implants, we very often get a dreaded phone call. And the patient says to you, doc, my implant is loose. So, initially, most of us don’t like to hear that. However, it’s perfectly normal for this to occur. and it will occur, if you are involved in implant dentistry.

Dr. Pavel Krastev: So once you have the initial heart attack and you say, oh my God, an implant is failing, usually, it’s not the implant itself failing. It’s simply a loose abutment screw. So in most cases, take a deep breath when you get that phone call and the patient says, the implant is loose, and relax and say to yourself that you will evaluate the situation and usually remedy it relatively, easily by simply torquing in the prosthesis. So the trick that I’m going to explain is whenever I insert an abutment and a crown or multiple crowns, I always take a photograph of the abutment. I remove the crowns, I set them aside, I put the model on the table, and I simply take a photograph of the occlusal aspect. This way I know where all the abutment access holes are, okay?

Dr. Pavel Krastev: Sometimes they can be straight up, sometimes they’re on the side. Sometimes we use custom abutments, et cetera. So in order for, making the fixing of the problem easier, it gives you a map that you know, on the particular patient where the access holes are on each individual tooth that you’ve restored. And I usually, once I take the photograph of the abutments, I place it in the patient chart, and I have it there for reference. So when you do get the phone call, a patient comes in. Now you explain to the patient, obviously, you take an x-ray, you probe, you evaluate what’s going on. And in most cases, you’ll realize that it’s not the actual implant that’s failing or that’s loose, it’s the actual prosthesis. Typically, this occurs, over time in many systems, especially in systems that don’t form a cold weld, between the above and implant interface.

Dr. Pavel Krastev: But that’s a, that’s another conversation. So, very briefly, take an x-ray, make sure the implant is stable, and now your job is to find where that access should be made on the tooth in order to get to the screw. So, hence, you open the chart for that particular patient and you, and you examine the photograph that you took previously when you inserted the case. So now you at least know where you should, do your access. And the access itself is, very similar in many cases, to an endodontic access that you guys are all used to doing. and then you have to find the screw when looking for the screw. rather for the abutment with the access hole to the screw, make sure you use copious irrigation, a lot of water to cool the ceramic restoration so you don’t fracture a porcelain.

Dr. Pavel Krastev: The other thing that I like to do whenever I’m faced with this part of dentistry is I explain to the patient that I will do my best to find the screw without damaging the prosthesis. But unfortunately, in some cases, the ceramics can fracture. And, in that scenario, then we need to make a whole new prosthesis. But, in conclusion, make it a habit, even with, no matter whether you’re inserting a single unit or full mouth case, take that photograph that at least you will be aided in where to start the access preparation for the school location. Alright, my peeps, thank you very much. And, thanks again to the Thriving Dentist Organization. and, I hope, I hope this tip helps in your clinical everyday practices. Thank you very much.

Gary Takacs: Well, welcome back to The Thriving Dentist Show, and special thanks to Dr. Pavel Krastev for that great tip. He’s been very kind, to offer a regular cadence of tips on the Thriving Dentist Show. He takes a lot of effort into doing those and lots of really practical wisdom. Well, I’m excited about this episode. The world is changing faster than ever, and especially in the world of AI and marketing, AI and marketing. And so we’re gonna kind of unpack that, for you. and, you know, it’s important to, you know, be informed about what’s happening in the world of AI. You know, it used to be a, really, a one trick pony when it came to search, and it was all about Google search, right? Well, it’s still, Google has massive dominance still, but, I argue, can anyone name other search engines that are out there?

Gary Takacs: Now, Naren, you can, yes. In that world, but to the public, it was Google and then Google and Google, yes. Right. however, now that’s changing. We have ai, we have chat, GTP, we have perplexity, we have Gemini, we have Grok, we have Claude. We have all kinds of things happening in the world of AI, and AI influencing marketing. So we’re gonna kind of, unpack this for you, so you can learn more about this, and you can use this information to strengthen and enhance the marketing that you’re achieving in your practice. I mean, marketing at a very basic level is, things that will allow us to attract your ideal patients. And notice I put the word your in there, because your ideal patient may be very different than a dentist that is across the street from you based on your mix of services. So it isn’t just a one size fits all for every dentist. It has to be all adapted to you. So near I wanna start with a question from the title of this episode, because I think a lot of dentists will be thinking it. But, can you, talk a little bit about what is Zero Click Search?

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. Yeah, I think the today’s topic, do’s and don’ts in the world of AI search and Zero Click search is a timely topic given how much the world is changing, like you talked about in your remarks. And I think, yeah, you are correct. Let’s start by defining what is Zero Click Search. even today, Google is the 800 pound, you know, beast, if I could use that term. when it comes to search, now search is regular search, which is kind of what we are used to. We used to call it traditional SEO, it’s Google Maps again, that has been around for several years now, maybe a decade or more, where people are finding, using Google to find directions, look up phone numbers, get from point A to point B, you know, figure out reviews. So that’s the Google Maps piece.

Naren Arulrajah: And now there is a new game in town that’s called AI Search, which is built into Google itself. and if I were to look at market Share, we’ll touch on later, Google still is, you know, 95% of the market. And I’ll give you some numbers and so forth as we get into it. So what is Zero Click search? Zero Click Search is the idea that people don’t have to leave Google to get the answer they want. So for example, if I’m on Google and, you know, on my mobile device, Google knows that I’m on my mobile device and I have my Google Maps up open, and I look for, you know, cafe near me, right? Or dentist near me. Google knows this person is probably interested in going to that cafe, or, you know, going to that dentist. So it immediately will show me information like reviews, how many reviews does that cafe have or that dentist have?

Naren Arulrajah: It’ll show me like 4.5 stars, 749 reviews. It might even tease me by showing some of the recent reviews or some of the most relevant reviews to me. It probably will show me the phone number because it probably is thinking maybe I wanna make a phone call. It’ll tell me if the off, if the place is open or not. Because again, Google is thinking, you know, maybe I want to get there right now, so it’ll be good for me to know whether it’s open or not. So the idea is that I don’t have to go click on something else. That’s why the word zero click comes in to find additional answers. Google almost kind of guesses what I might be interested in next and gives it to me right then and there so I don’t have to go looking for it. So that’s the example of Google Reviews, right?

Naren Arulrajah: I talked about address, phone number, reviews, directions, all those things are being presented to us automatically because Google knows, you know, what device we are on, what app we are using, and what’s going on. Like, are we on the move, are we stationary? All that stuff. So it has so much information about us, and also it has historical information because we all have a Google account. It’s tracking everything. It has, we have done yesterday, day before, last month, last year. So it also knows that. So it’s kind of being the smart ous, so to speak, in helping us navigate that. Even regular search, that’s something we are all familiar with. And now the new Kid on Block is the AI search. And what Google has come up with is something called AI Overview. So Google still has Gemini as a standalone product, which competes with Chat GPT and Complexity.

Naren Arulrajah: These are AI search engines. But in addition, Google has integrated AI search into Google itself. Why that’s a big deal, because Google is used 12 billion times a day on regular search and 7 billion times a day on Google Maps. So comparatively Google is 20 times bigger than charge GPT 25 times bigger than Perplexity. So it’s huge. So when they integrate AI search as part of Google itself, people are now getting AI answers without leaving Google. For example, I’m working on an email, I don’t need to open up charge GPT or Perplexity or something else. I can just go to my Google screen or even my browser and just type in an email that I’m typing and say, edit this for me. Google will immediately edit it. Like, I don’t need to open anything up, I’m just on the window that I’m on, right? Same way, AI overview is Google kind of realizing for certain kinds of searches, I want Google to give me a summary versus point me to websites.

Naren Arulrajah: I’ll give you an example. So if I’m interested in the cost of dental implants in Chicago, I don’t want to go to this website and that website and a third website to figure all of that stuff out. I want Google to go to those top three websites and give me a summary on these are the different types of implants you can get, and here is the range of costs in Chicago, and you know, and even give me some resources. So I know if I want to go dig deeper, I can click on that first website or the second one or the third one. It collected all that information from. So Google is realizing that for certain kinds of queries, people want Google to do the heavy lifting and give them, like, almost think of it like an essay answer we get in an exam.

Naren Arulrajah: Like I know most of us who have been through schools, we know multiple choice answers as well as we know essay answers, right? Google is giving us that essay answer, so we don’t have to go and write that essay answer or figure out the essay answer or specific question. So that’s built in. What I mean by built in is Google automatically realizes when I type in cost of dental implants in Chicago, I want that essay answer. So we don’t even need to say, Google, please go and look at three websites and gimme a summary. It automatically knows that. Now, if I want to go a step further and I want Google to do real AI work, there’s this tab or this option called AI mode, like the example I gave you, right? I want Google to edit an email, I want Google to summarize a document.

Naren Arulrajah: I can just, you know, add the document and say, summarize this, or copy the email and say, edit this for me. And I can even say, edit it so that this disgruntled patient, you know, I don’t want to like make them more mad, but at the same time, I don’t want, you know, like you can explain what you’re looking for. So Google understands what’s going on and will do it for you. So we have to understand, in the world of zero click search, people are gonna get their answers more and more and more on Google itself, whether it’s your reviews, whether it’s your directions, your phone numbers, your office hours, your location, or AI summaries in the form of AI overview. So the key is you better be the one Google is providing as an answer versus your competition. So you want to overwhelmingly dominate Google, whether it’s AI, search, regular Search, or Google Maps, and you want to be part of the, you know, zero click search.

Naren Arulrajah: We have clients, I mean, driving, you know, life Smiles is one of the clients, you know, and of course all the practices, Gary has referred to us since, you know, they are ranking for hundreds of keywords. They have seen 10, 20, 30, 40,000 times in a single month at the top of Google search, whether it’s AI search, whether it’s Google Maps, whether it’s regular search. So you really could take advantage of these, you know, new trends of AI and zero click search to your advantage. You could be the only practice that is seen 40,000 times in your area without you spending any dime on ads when your competition is seen like a thousand times. So you have 30,000 times or 30 x advantage versus your competition. It’s not easy. And we can get into some of the nitty gritties on how to do that, but so try to dominate zero click search. So look at how many times are you being seen, look at how many different phrases and searches you are showing up for. And you should be in the, you know, tens of thousands when it comes to the how many times you’re seen, and hundreds when it comes to how many searches you are showing up for.

Gary Takacs: You know, Naren, in the title of this episode, we talk about dos and don’ts in the world of AI search, right? So let’s focus on the dos. So the next question I have for you, what are things that our listeners should do consistently in the world of AI search and zero click search? What should they be doing?

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. Let me list them first and then let me go through them. One is you better dominate Google, and I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Three to 5% of you will get 95% of the benefit from Google organic search, which is AI search, Google Maps, or Google search. So three to 5% of you will get 95% of the benefits. So the question you have to ask yourself is, how do I become one of those three to 5% that gets 95% of the free traffic free benefits from Google? That’s number one. I’ll get into how to do that. Second is you don’t want to ignore the AI only search engines chat, GPT, perplexity, Gemini, you know, gro and even Claude by Anthropic. So there are five other companies. Gemini is by the way, by Google Chat. GPT is by open AI, perplexity, its own company.

Naren Arulrajah: Claude is made by, anthropic, and of course, grok is made by Xai, which is Elon Musk’s company. So they’re all players, of course, they’re all tiny when you look at Google. So all combined are like 5% of the volume, but you never know, right? Like, it’s very hard to predict what the future holds, so you don’t want to like ignore them. So you also wanna make sure you are showing up on all these other platforms. So one of the things we focus on is we track how our clients are showing up on chat, GPT, perplexity and Gemini. And there are two problems we focus on. One is, unlike Google, which has millions and millions of servers, so it’s updating the information literally on a daily basis. Many of these other platforms do not have millions of servers. So sometimes they might show the wrong information, there’s wrong phone number, the wrong office hours.

Naren Arulrajah: So the first thing we check on a regular basis on behalf of our clients is, are these other platforms showing the correct information? When people specifically ask about our client’s practices, that’s really important, right? Because imagine somebody getting the wrong phone number and calling the rock office, or thinking you are open on Saturdays when you are not, and then getting mad that you are not open on Saturday, because again, they got the wrong information. This has actually happened to me. I was in Ireland and I used, I think Rock and Chat GPT, and they gave me some plans on where to go. And when I go there, that restaurant doesn’t even exist, like it hasn’t existed for two years. But for some crazy reason, both of these platforms gave me as part of my travel ary, I was mad, but yeah, I was on vacation, so I didn’t sweat it. I just moved around and found some other place, to go and have a nice lunch at.

Gary Takacs: Yeah, that does speak, that does speak to the challenge that the information is, not necessarily accurate.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, it’s exactly, especially with these other search engines, eh, you can’t blame them. They’re small. They don’t have the bandwidth and the resources that Google has. The second thing I would focus on is, you know, how many times are you showing up in charge of GPT? We track it. So many of our clients are showing up 50, 60 times on charge GPT 70, 80 times on perplexity. You know what I mean by showing up so many times for different keywords, right? So you just, like you, we check the keywords our clients are showing up for in Google. We also have to check the keywords our clients are showing up for in AI search engines, unlike Google, these other platforms are not sophisticated. Like Google, for example, will give you Google Analytics, so you don’t need to figure it out. They will tell you, here are the keywords, this keywords were typed in 39 times, and you are number one or number two.

Naren Arulrajah: Now, these other platforms don’t do that. They don’t have Google Analytics, they don’t have the BA stuff, so you have to manually go and figure this stuff out. So we do that on behalf of our clients on a regular basis to consistently track how well they’re doing on these other platforms. Now, let me focus back on Google when it comes to do’s and don’ts, because Google still is 95% of the market. So what can you do? So a lot has changed. As soon as AI came along, people try to cheat, right? They, you try to use AI to write content, Google caught on and they started punishing these sites. So don’t do that. So don’t use AI to write content if you want that content to rank on Google. That’s number one. Number two, especially in healthcare, Google realized the stakes are high. I’m sure we all heard of the case where, you know, there was this young man in Texas, you know, who was a graduate of a university.

Naren Arulrajah: He was talking to Chat GPT at two in the morning, and it kind of talked him into taking his own life. He took a gun and shot himself. Of course, AI doesn’t know the implications of what’s coming out of it, so it was literally kind of encouraging him to kill himself. And, you know, and now there are lawsuits, not just one, but dozens and dozens where people have lost their lives because church, GPT just didn’t know what it was doing. This is the problem with ai, right? Like when it’s, it’s making up words, it doesn’t know the implications of its words. So Google realized, if we made up words and we showed that as answers to somebody, you know, let’s say researching on advanced gum disease or cancer, and those words are the wrong words, and they misguide them, there’s gonna be huge lawsuits.

Naren Arulrajah: Google being the most valuable company outside of Nvidia in the world, stakes are very high for them. They cannot mess up. So what Google realized is they want to reward people who are qualified. So in other words, if you are a board certified doctor and you include that in your bio along with which university you went to and how many years of experience you have and all that stuff, the way Google wants, they’re going to make your content show up. Why Google knows if something goes wrong, they can say, Dr. Smith said this, not me. And Dr. Smith is board certified. He has been an expert in a member of these associations, and he has been an expert in x, y, Z topics. So Google can always say, I’m not giving you an answer. I’m like pointing you to the experts. So

Gary Takacs: It’s about leveraging your credentials, which it’s more than more important than ever to have credentials. I mean, it’s always been important to have credentials, you know, from a, you know, just continuous learning standpoint. but you know, there are credentials in dentistry. You can become accredited by the A CD. Yes, you can earn a fellowship and a mastership in the A GD, the different associations and specialties have special accreditation. so it becomes even more important for doctors to pursue that, not just let alone for the benefits of pursuing that yourself. You know, the benefits you get outta that, but it really helps you. Now in marketing. Naren, this gives me a chance to pivot to the next question. If you’re a regular listener of the Thriving Dentist show, you know how much I talk about the value of adding high value dental services to your practice, high value dental services.

Gary Takacs: So, right, and I would assume you’re interested in those things. If your interest is everyday general dentistry, then don’t let me put a wet blanket on that . But, most of our listeners are interested in selectively adding high value dentistry. Things like placing, restoring implants, adult orthodontics, cosmetic dentistry, complex restorative dentistry, maybe diagnosing and treating obstructive sleep apnea with appliance therapy. So Nera, now let’s bring this into marketing. So if we have a listener that has their menu of high value services, but by the way, I’m often asked, you know, how do I choose my menu? High value services? I would not advise you to choose them based on marketing. I would ask you to choose them based on where your passion is.

Naren Arulrajah: Right?

Gary Takacs: If that’s something you really enjoy, something that you might envision taking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands plus hours of CE on, then that is what you wanna choose. So now Neen, imagine that there are now patients, and what I wanna ask you is, I’m gonna use some different language here, talk about more of the idea of becoming a hero to certain of these patients or patients interested in cosmetic dentistry. Patients interested in sedation, patients interested in dental implants. How can marketing, in the role of AI search and zero click, how can doctors attract more? Not now we’re, we’re starting to be more qualitative. We don’t just want more new patients, we want more of a certain type of patients. Talk about how they can master that.

Naren Arulrajah: That’s an excellent question, Gary. And I think, I wanna kind of anchor what you said. The most successful practices, both you and I have seen, are kind of like high-end restaurants. Like, you know, I was in France and Belgium a couple of weeks ago on vacation visiting my daughter. And the thing in France is that when you go to a restaurant, pretty much any restaurant, you know, they don’t have 300 or 30 things on their menu. Of course, there are those restaurants that cater to foreigners, and they have like 30 things on their menu. Most of them have like 10 things on their menu and everything on that menu, there’s a theme behind it. Like they’re from a certain region of France, or, you know, and there are three or four dishes they’re very well known for, and they become really good at it.

Naren Arulrajah: So what you talked about in terms of, you know, those high value services sedation, right? Half of Americans are afraid to go to a dentist because of pain. That could be one of those themes that you focus on and you get really good at both in terms of, you know, helping those patients, but also telling your story from a marketing perspective. Cosmetic veneers, Invisalign. So you could pick four or five of these. And I think your question to answer your question is, you know, how do I go about thinking about this? So if your goal is to be the hero to these patients, so let’s say sedation for example, you know, first step is when a patient who’s afraid of going to a dentist goes to Google, that’s where 95% of the people start their search and they start typing in, you know, pain-free dentistry, you know, no pain dentists, and some may even hear the word sedation, or some may have heard the word nitrous oxide.

Naren Arulrajah: So they’re typing in all kinds of things that they know that they think will help them have pain-free dentistry. The first question is, are you showing up? Because if you are not showing up, especially organically, meaning without you having to buy ads, they don’t know that you are a good solution for that particular need. They have. Again, you don’t need to do 25 things. You don’t need to do what everybody else does. Like you said, Gary, they have to lean into their passion, what gets them excited, what they really want to do. So that’s step one. So you wanna make sure at least for 40 to 50 keywords related to sedation, you are ranking, meaning you are at the top five, top 10 positions of Google search results. And this could be those keywords could be, you know, pain-free dentist near me, you know, pain-free dentist, zip code, pain-free dentist, Chicago or sedation dentist sedation dentistry. You know, there’s all these variations of 40 to 50 keywords related to sedation you want to dominate around your neighborhood. If you are in Manhattan, that will be a two mile radius. If you are in a smaller town, that could be a two hour radius, you know, sorry, a hundred mile radius,

Gary Takacs: Manhattan might be six blocks.

Naren Arulrajah: six blocks. Exactly. Yeah. Just

Gary Takacs: Let me ask you a question related to this. We know that Google can tell us, what are the most common keywords and key phrases that the public uses to search for a service? Yes. But does chat, ETP, perplexity, Gemini, grok, c Claude, do they have that same ability to tell us

Naren Arulrajah: They don’t carry. I mean, they don’t even track the stats. Like, if I, if you go to charge GPT and ask charge GPT, tell me all the keywords I’m ranking for, they won’t give you an answer. They don’t know. They don’t know. As opposed to Google has something called Google Analytics that will tell you. So the way you find out is you type those keywords in, and we have built technology to type every keyword under the sun to see which keywords are ranking, which keywords are not ranking. but they don’t have, they’re still young companies, you know, two, three years old. So they don’t have the infrastructure that Google has to give you data on what’s going on. So you are on your own there. So you have to build your own tools. We built it on behalf of our clients to kind of figure all of this stuff out.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. You know, we kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but, I wanna get, a little bit more specific about it. Why have, human first content Yes. and credentials, from reputable places, like universities and institutes and associations, why has that become more important than ever before?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, that’s a great question, Gary. I think in the world of AI, especially in healthcare, where the implications could be dire, like those examples of literally young men, 23, 20 4-year-old taking a gun and blowing their brains out. I mean, it literally happened because they believe what comes out of chat, GPT, and they think if chat GPT says you should kill yourself, that they should kill themselves. Of course, today chat G PT doesn’t do that, but, you know, but it still hallucinates and it makes up stuff. So I’m using chat GPT. I’m not saying they’re bad actor or anything, I’m just talking about those actual cases. So for that reason, Google realizes you can’t rely on AI to tell you things that are critical. You know, like money, life, health, these are all critical things. If somebody takes the wrong move, I mean, you know, I know if, I hope you don’t mind me sharing this, but you share on social media about, you know, that bite you had the snake bite, right?

Naren Arulrajah: What if somebody gave you the wrong advice and you did the wrong thing, you know, it could have risked your life, right? So it’s really important. The person giving you advice knows what they’re talking about. So it has to be human written content. It can’t be AI generated, and you have to include those credentials. And I guess the tip I would share with credentials is, you know, if I get no name body to give me a certificate, it doesn’t count as much. If I get a university that has been there for 120 years to give me a certificate, it counts a lot because Google knows that’s a real university that has a 120 year history and you getting some certification from that. So I think even the type of credentials you’re getting means a lot today.

Gary Takacs: So the more, the more, initials you have after your name, the better.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, absolutely. Gary, the more initials. Yeah, it’s kind of, you’re going back to the future. I mean, like, going back to the future, you know, I’m using that like, you know, like you, because yeah, some of the things that used to be great in the old days is coming back, the credentials, the name, the acronyms, all those things,

Gary Takacs: Used to be sort of like bragging rights, but now it actually has very measurable marketing benefits.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. The other thing I didn’t touch on in this world, I know we talked about humans first. I know talked about credentials, like as to what you can do to really shine. The other one is, CR ux. So Google made a major overhaul and it said, instead of looking at Lighthouse go, I’m sure you may have heard me talk about Lighthouse Co, which is a scope that’s given to every single page on your website, page by page. Now they’re looking at the entire website. So still it includes everything Google looked at page by page, but now they’re looking at overall, is the website easy to read? Does the website, you know, load well on different devices? Does the website provide useful informal information? Does it have human first content? Does it have all these credentials?

Gary Takacs: In case our listeners aren’t familiar with the term Human First, define that.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. Human first, meaning, you know, it’s written by a human, you know, for humans. And so pretty much they’re literally saying, don’t use AI to generate content for you and slap it on your website. You know, if you do that, we are gonna punish you because we know it can, it’ll have words that sound, you know, authoritative, but they could be the wrong words leading somebody down the wrong path.

Gary Takacs: I think you’re bucking the tread though, the trend there, Darren, because, I’m pretty convinced that there isn’t a single resume that’s written by you. Yeah,

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. I think they

Gary Takacs: All sound the same.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. People are going to use AI because we as humans are lazy, right? The question is, if you want to rank on Google, then don’t do it. Of course, you know, you are a hundred percent right. We give assignments to our employees before we hire them, and 95% of them use AI to answer the assignments. Carrie, like, it’s just like, you can’t, it’s, it’s, it’s so obvious that they just copy pasted what we gave them into, you know, chat GPT or whatever these AI tools and just copy paste the answer back. of course, you, those people can be found out the minute you start asking detailed questions. They have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. And a lot of times when we see certain words, we even like ask questions where we know how AI would answer it, and then we can like totally flag them out.

Naren Arulrajah: We are like, we don’t wanna waste any time. This person, we understand people will cheat at least when it comes to hiring employees, but at least they are using their brain to cheat in a smart way versus stupid way. Like we look for, you know, it’s unfortunate the world we live in, but I agree. People are using it a lot on social media. They use it, you know, to create posts. And I think Instagram and Facebook doesn’t seem to mind as much, you know, when you use ai, but Google definitely when it comes to search ranking, because they’re afraid of, you know, surfacing the wrong information, they’re afraid of surfacing some information that takes somebody’s life or cause somebody harm. I mean,

Gary Takacs: There’s liability.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, there’s liability. Exactly. I mean, like, literally those parents are not keeping quiet. Those parents who lost their kids are suing open AI for like hundreds of millions of dollars a and it’s not gonna go away because, you know, if my kid killed himself, you know, and the last thing they did is talk to church g pt, and I can see the entire thread, you know, before pulling the trigger. I’m not gonna be a happy camper, you know, just, and I think, so we live in a fun, interesting times and an interesting world. So going back to something else, I know you asked me about like these five groups, right? So step one, make sure for each group you are ranking for 50 to 75, 30 to 50 keywords. Step two, the landing pages have to be compelling. Having a simple welcome video, you know, having cases, or if Invisalign has 5, 6, 7, 8 cases, explain by showcasing how you try. You

Gary Takacs: Have to back up. You have to back up why you would be a good choice for . Yeah,

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, exactly. You have to give them the reason. Doctors,

Gary Takacs: patient testimonials, a video where you talk about, you know, Hey, I’m Dr. So and so. I love helping patients with all kinds of dentistry, but I especially love helping my patients fill in the blank.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: That becomes part of, a storyline, you know, that AI is going to pick up

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: For you, because that’s something that’s real, you know, in terms of the video. Although I, there are AI videos now.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes,

Gary Takacs: I video, but I would say doctors, if you’re thinking about it, I can’t tell you how many times with my clients, Marin, I’ve said, I really want you to produce some short topical videos for you mm-hmm . You know, for your website, and they will literally frown at me on a Zoom call.

Naren Arulrajah: .

Gary Takacs: Really? Do I have to, and answer that question really near, do I have to do that?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, a hundred percent. Gary, even reviews, right? I know like life smiles and, you know, many of your practices you work with, they are into sedation. Like the review should talk about how I felt at home and how I was afraid of going to a dentist and how, you know, after coming to x, y, Z practice, I’m so glad I’m here, right? So you need to, like, we talked about the idea of being a hero, right? So that theme of being a hero, the welcome video, those cases, those reviews, they all have to work well together. You don’t have to do this for a hundred things, but pick the four or five areas, you know, or patient groups you wanna be a hero to, and just fill in the blanks.

Gary Takacs: Well, you didn’t quite answer the way I wanted you to, when I said, you know, if I’m a dentist, do I have to do that? Yeah. The answer is yes, you do. Yes.

Naren Arulrajah: , you have to

Gary Takacs: If you want your marketing to be effective, because that’s real. Yes. Talking about it, that’s real. and it doesn’t have to be highly produced. You know, I remember not that long ago, Neen, where we’d, we’d want video for our website where we’d bring in a film crew and shut down for a day and have a massive amount of expense to produce some videos Today, it’s, it’s, it’s literally a smartphone video.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. That

Gary Takacs: Is no more than 90 seconds long. and it’s very compelling. It’s real, it’s down to earth, it’s genuine. You don’t have to be perfect, yes, but it needs to exist. and you can come up with all kinds of cool topics, and your team members can do this too. For example, let’s say you have a whitening champion in your office, maybe that’s an assistant that really we’ve designated as a whitening champion, and maybe that team member could talk about the different forms of whitening that are available in a 92nd video. Hey, we can do it for you chair side. So if you’re the kind of person’d, rather have it done for you, we can do whitening for your chair side. we can make custom trays and you can do it at home. So if you’re more of a do it yourself person, you could do that at home.

Gary Takacs: And we have a third option, that is an over the counter option that makes whitening very inexpensive. Now it’s only available in a dental office, but we can literally hand you preformed trays that you can use at home. We’ve got a whitening option, that will suit anybody’s style, whether you want it done for you, do it yourself, or an inexpensive option that’s budget friendly. If you have any questions, next time you come in for an appointment, I’ll be happy to talk to you, and we’ll find out what the best option is for you. Darren, there’s the script, there’s the video there. It was, yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: I know. It’s so easy, Gary. I know you have coached so many clients, especially our mutual clients, to get over this hump of, oh, it’s so difficult and hard. You’re talking 30, 45 seconds, just like you would talk to a friend. You know, this is not complicated stuff. This is the more down to earth simple language, just like you’re talking to someone just like what you would answer when somebody’s in your office, right? You know, they ask these questions. So just the beauty of all this kind of marketing, we are talking about zero click search and AI search. They’re gonna work for you tens of thousands of times every single month again and again without you having to kind of redo things. So it’s so

Gary Takacs: Powerful. A couple more questions and then we’ll bring it to a close today. But, there’s, we’ve talked about a lot of different company names and vernacular today. I’m gonna ask you about three. What about chat, TTP, Gemini and Perplexity? Should we pay attention to them?

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. Gary, I think today Chat, GPT has 800 million weekly users, and Gemini has 700 million weekly users. Geminis by Google, by the way. But the real threat is not Cha, GPT or Gemini, it’s Google itself. Why Google is used 12 billion times a day, regular search, and around 2 billion of those regular searches every day are powered by ai. Meaning you’re getting AI answers. So like we noticed many of our clients were ranking for a hundred keywords, all of a sudden they’re ranking for 200 keywords, like overnight. Why? Because there’s so much new traffic being driven by Google AI search to our websites. So the ones who have been doing really well, meaning ranking for a hundred or more keywords on regular search and Google Maps are getting a huge boost from all the AI search. Like an example was the cost of X, Y, Z in this town, or, you know, how do I do A, B, C?

Naren Arulrajah: And it kind of gives you this paragraph answer. so I think realistically speaking, 5%, if that is all the other platforms combined when it comes to AI search, and 95%, I believe is Google now, you know, Google stock price $4 trillion, and it’s the most valuable company outside of Nvidia in the world. So it is, you know, reflected on their stock price because they’re the most powerful. Right? Now I’m talking about the consumer side, right? On the business side, I think Cloud is the leader. So if you want to use, you know, AI to help automate your business or do things for your business, then I think cloud is the best choice. They’re crushing it. cloud is the company, product by OpenAI, I mean, their revenue is now like, I think 18 trillion, $18 billion, even bigger than OpenAI, which is the first game in town.

Naren Arulrajah: But they’re all over the place. I’m not a huge fan of OpenAI because I don’t think they’re doing anything extremely well anymore. Like even Gemini, came out, and they beat, you know, open AI in terms of their own algorithms, even their video algorithm. I think they shut down because they’re not code anymore open ai. Now, I think again, Google is considered to be the best video AI algorithm. So I do think, on the consumer side, Google is winning. And, you know, on the business side, Claude is winning. Claude really focused.

Gary Takacs: I’ll share my bias, my bias towards Claude. I really am using Claude in ways that I don’t think I could use with some of the other engines out there. But, it just depends where your interest and where your focus and what your line of work is, what you’re doing. I right, really like Claude, one last question. Naren, keep it tight. We’re coming to the finish line here. If I know I’m making mistakes, in terms of marketing and not dominating AI search, what’s the next step?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, I think the first step is to get a report card. So we offer what we call a marketing strategy meeting. The link is ekwa.com, Ekwa.com/td And what we do is we look at you and your competitors through the lens of Google, through the lens of chat, GPT, Gemini and perplexity, and we’ll tell you how well you are doing or how poorly you are doing. Are you ranking how many times which keywords? If yes, why? If not, why not? And also, we do the same thing with your top three competitors. So you really get a feeling on what’s going on in, when it comes to digital marketing. Are you the practice that is in the top 5% and getting seen tens of thousands of times, and have this unfair advantage when it comes to search, whether it’s AI search or Google or perplexity or whatever, or you are not, if you are doing really well, you are in the top three 5%.

Naren Arulrajah: We would tell you don’t change a thing, just keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re not, the other thing we do is we’ll give you a roadmap, a plan on the root causes, why you are not doing well and what to do about it. You know, maybe it’s snap, maybe it’s CRUX, maybe it’s human first content. Maybe it’s not having your credentials written up the right way, whatever it is, we’ll do that. It’s a $900 value, it’s our gift to you. We do six hours of research and we share all of that. Once again, the link is ekwa.com/td.

Gary Takacs: You know, and if you’re, listening to this and you’d like some help kind of unpacking this, if your head is spinning a little bit and you’d like some help unpacking this, it’s something we do within our coaching Thriving Dentist coaching, go to, thrivingdentist.com/csm coaching strategy meeting. And let me bring it back to big picture here. We got very granular in this episode. If you’d really like some guidance and some coaching on how to develop your ideal practice, I’d love to talk to you. We, I’d love to work with you if that was your wish. go to thrivingdentist.com/csm. It’ll open up my calendar. You’ll schedule a zoom meeting with me, and we’ll talk about your practice and what kind of ambitions you have for the future and how we might be able to help you get there if there’s a good fit. On that note, thank you all for the privilege of your time. This has been an action packed episode. Hope you’ve learned lots in this one, and Rin and I look forward to connecting with you on the next Thriving Dentist Show.