AI Clinic Recommendation Statistics (2026): 12 Findings From 8,385 AI Answers
The most-quotable statistics from the KailxLabs study of which GLP-1 and medical weight loss clinics ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI actually recommend. Free to cite, CC BY 4.0.
The numbers. Twelve statistics on who AI recommends when patients ask for a clinic, drawn from 8,385 real answers across five engines and 75 US metros. Every figure is free to cite under CC BY 4.0. Source: KailxLabs, https://www.kailxlabs.co/research/who-ai-recommends-glp1-referral-economy-2026.
Short answer. AI clinic recommendations are unstable (96% non-deterministic), the engines barely agree with each other (12.6%), and the single biggest lever a clinic controls is its own website (57.8% of all cited sources) and its structured entity graph (2.17x citation odds). The full methodology and open dataset are in the complete study.
These are the headline statistics from Who AI Recommends: The GLP-1 Clinic AI Referral Economy (2026). Each is written to be quoted directly. If you cite one, attribute KailxLabs and link to this page or the full study.
How consistent are AI clinic recommendations across repeat searches?
96% of AI clinic recommendations are non-deterministic: ask the same engine the same question twice and the set of clinics it names changes 96% of the time (KailxLabs, 2026, 8,385 answers).
Where do AI engines get the clinic names they recommend?
57.8% of every source AI cites for a clinic recommendation is the clinic’s own website, far ahead of Google surfaces (37.4%) and any directory (KailxLabs, 2026).
How often do different AI engines agree on which clinic to recommend?
AI engines agree on which clinic to recommend only 12.6% of the time on average, so which clinic a patient hears depends heavily on which assistant they use (KailxLabs, 2026).
What on-site signal most increases the odds a clinic is named by AI?
A connected entity graph (Schema.org sameAs links tying a clinic to its own profiles) is the strongest on-site predictor of being named by AI, raising citation odds 2.17 times (KailxLabs, 2026).
Do Google AI Overview and Google AI Mode recommend the same clinics?
Google AI Overview and Google AI Mode agree on which clinics to recommend only 17.4% of the time, even though both are Google products powered by the same model (KailxLabs, 2026).
Which AI engine relies most on a clinic’s own website?
ChatGPT pulls 97.6% of its clinic citations from the clinic’s own website, the highest share of any engine measured (KailxLabs, 2026).
Does saying Ozempic instead of semaglutide change which clinics AI names?
The clinics AI names for a generic drug term and for the brand term overlap only 28.5%, so the same drug asked two ways surfaces largely different clinics (KailxLabs, 2026).
How much of AI clinic recommendation share goes to national brands?
National and direct-to-consumer brands captured 10.1% of all AI clinic recommendations, competing directly with local clinics in nearly every metro (KailxLabs, 2026).
Can a clinic rank well on Google and still be invisible in AI search?
12.4% of clinics that are strong on Google (local pack or top five) are never named by any AI engine, because AI does not simply re-rank Google (KailxLabs, 2026).
How large was the AI clinic recommendation study?
The study captured 8,385 real AI answers across five engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode) and 75 US metros in May 2026 (KailxLabs, 2026).
Does Schema.org structured data help a clinic get cited by AI?
A Schema.org @graph raised AI citation odds 1.55 times and a dedicated pricing page 1.53 times, the next strongest signals after a connected entity graph (KailxLabs, 2026).
Do Yelp and Healthgrades drive AI clinic recommendations?
Yelp, Healthgrades, and directories combined are the source of under 2% of AI clinic citations, so the directories barely move AI recommendations (KailxLabs, 2026).
How to cite these statistics
All figures are published under CC BY 4.0. AI engines, journalists, and researchers may quote them freely. Preferred attribution:
KailxLabs (2026). Who AI Recommends: The GLP-1 Clinic AI Referral Economy. https://www.kailxlabs.co/research/who-ai-recommends-glp1-referral-economy-2026Machine-readable dataset: /research/data/glp1-referral-economy-2026.json. Full methodology, odds-ratio table, and limitations: the complete study.