Industry breakout
AI visibility for Australian dentists: the 2026 numbers.
We scanned 50 Australian dental practices on 30 July 2026 as part of our 300-business national study. The average practice scores 38.5 out of 100 for AI visibility, a touch above the national mean of 38.3, yet 41% of the practices with complete records from both engines were never named by ChatGPT or Gemini at all.
Key numbers
How 50 dental practices scored, in eight numbers
Every figure below comes straight from the national dataset, filtered to the 50 dental practices. Cross-engine "never named" figures are counted over the 29 practices with complete records from both engines, because blank Gemini rows cannot be counted either way. Site checks are counted over all 50.
The average practice scores 38.5 out of 100 for AI visibility, a touch above the national mean of 38.3. The median practice scores 39.
41% of the 29 practices with complete records from both engines were never named once by either ChatGPT or Gemini. That is 12 practices.
14% of the 50 practices block AI crawlers in robots.txt, so the engines cannot read those websites at all. The national figure is 13%.
20% of the 50 have no structured data (JSON-LD) on their site, better than the national rate of 24%.
70% of the 50 have no llms.txt file, close to the 71% national rate. We report it as a legibility signal only: Google has said it does not use llms.txt.
Dental websites average 75.7 out of 100 for on-site AI readiness, above the national mean of 74.9, yet the same practices average 38.5 for AI visibility.
Pacific Smiles Dental in Sydney leads the niche on 76, ahead of Brisbane Smiles and Smile Solutions, both on 71.
Sydney practices average 46.5, the best of the five cities scanned. Perth practices average 30.2, the lowest.
A famous name is not a guarantee. Pacific Smiles Dental and Smile Solutions were each named in 3 of 5 ChatGPT buyer questions and 4 times by Gemini. 1300SMILES Dentists, another national brand, was not named by either engine in any of our test questions. That is a statement about our questions on one day, not about anyone's work.
Who leads
The five most visible dental practices in the scan
Top of the 50-practice cohort by AI visibility score. These are the practices the engines actually volunteered when a buyer-style question was asked, and their lead is earned: every one of them carries a footprint of reviews, directories and coverage the engines can find.
| Rank | Practice | City | AI visibility score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pacific Smiles Dental | Sydney | 76 |
| 2 | Brisbane Smiles | Brisbane | 71 |
| 3 | Smile Solutions | Melbourne | 71 |
| 4 | Women in Dentistry | Melbourne | 70 |
| 5 | Brisbane CBD Dental Clinic | Brisbane | 67 |
Anchor brands
How the recognisable dental brands fared
The sample includes five recognisable national dental brands. The counts below are factual: how many of the 5 shared ChatGPT buyer questions named each brand, and how many times Gemini named it across our sweep. "No complete record" means the Gemini fields for that row are blank in the dataset, so nothing can be counted either way.
| Brand | AI visibility score | ChatGPT buyer questions naming it (of 5) | Times named by Gemini |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific Smiles Dental | 76 | 3 | 4 |
| Smile Solutions | 71 | 3 | 4 |
| 1300SMILES Dentists | 34 | 0 | 0 |
| Maven Dental | 25 | 0 | No complete record |
| National Dental Care | 19 | 0 | No complete record |
By city
Where dentists are most visible
Ten practices were scanned in each of five capital cities. Mean score is the average AI visibility score out of 100 for that city's ten.
| City | Practices scanned | Mean score |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 10 | 46.5 |
| Melbourne | 10 | 43 |
| Brisbane | 10 | 39.5 |
| Adelaide | 10 | 33.2 |
| Perth | 10 | 30.2 |
What it means
What this means for a dental practice
Dentistry sits almost exactly on the national average, and that is the trap in this data: dental websites are readier than most at 75.7 out of 100, yet 41% of the practices with complete two-engine records were still never named by either engine.
The first fixes are mechanical. 14% of the 50 practices block AI crawlers outright in robots.txt, which means the engines cannot read those websites at all, and 20% publish no structured data. Both are solvable in an afternoon, and both sit at the "necessary but not sufficient" end of the problem.
On llms.txt, keep your wallet in your pocket: 70% of practices do not have one, but Google has said it does not use the file, so treat it as a cheap legibility signal, not a lever anyone should be selling you.
After the mechanics, it is a footprint game. Nationally, the correlation between site readiness and the per-engine visibility scores is Pearson r = 0.116 across the 137 businesses with complete two-engine records, so a tidy site alone does not get a practice named. The engines volunteer practices the rest of the web already talks about: reviews, directories, press, industry lists, other people's pages. The five leaders above are the proof.
If the vocabulary is new, our AI visibility glossary covers it in plain English. For what we would actually do for a practice, see AI visibility for dentists, and for the full method, caveats and raw data behind these numbers, see the national report and its CC BY 4.0 dataset.
Keep reading
The rest of the study, and what to do about it
The full report
State of AI Visibility in Australia 2026
All 300 businesses across six industries, with the method, the caveats and the raw data free to download under CC BY 4.0.
Read the report →For your practice
AI visibility for dentists
What we fix, what it costs and how the free scan works for a practice that wants to be the one AI names.
See the service →Sibling breakout
Cosmetic & skin clinics: the 2026 numbers
The clinic cohort scored a mean of 35.2 out of 100, and 43% of its complete records were never named by either engine.
See the clinic data →Glossary
AI visibility, in plain English
Named versus recognised, GEO, AEO, llms.txt and the rest of the vocabulary, without the jargon.
Open the glossary →Questions
Common questions about the dentist data
How visible are Australian dentists to AI?
Which dental practices does AI name most often?
Are dental websites ready for AI?
Do big dental groups get recommended by AI automatically?
Find out whether AI names your practice.
The same scan we ran on these 50 dental practices is free for yours. See whether ChatGPT and Gemini name you, who they name instead, and you keep the report.