Who AI engines cite on medical queries

For general health questions, the sources behind AI answers are overwhelmingly institutional: Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, the National Institutes of Health through MedlinePlus and PubMed, the CDC, and large publishers such as WebMD and Healthline. The exact order varies by engine and topic, and we measure it per audit rather than publish a fixed ranking. The pattern itself is stable, and it is a reasonable choice by the engines: on health, they favor sources with institutional review behind every page.

A private practice will not be cited over MedlinePlus on "what is psoriasis". It can be cited on questions the institutions do not answer: what a procedure is like at this practice, how recovery works with this surgeon, what it costs locally, which insurance plans are accepted, and how to choose a specialist in a given city. Those answers come from the practice's own pages when the pages are specific, reviewed by a named clinician, current, and attached to an entity the engine can verify.

The practical sequence: link to institutional sources where you explain conditions, rather than competing with them; put your effort into procedure and location pages; add medical-review bylines; and connect clinicians to licensing and NPI records through markup. Our audit shows which sources each engine cites for your target queries and which of your pages are closest to being chosen.