Does my medspa show up in AI search?

1 · The question

When a patient in Sunnyvale opens ChatGPT and types “best botox near me,” ChatGPT picks three to five medspas and names them. Same on Claude. Same on Gemini. Same in the AI Overview block at the top of Google. If you do not know whether your clinic is on those lists, you do not know whether AI search is sending you patients.

This matters more for medspas than for many local-business verticals. Medspa queries are unusually high-intent: a patient asking the question is often days away from booking. And the AI answer is compressed: there is no equivalent of page two.

2 · Why most owners cannot answer it

The honest answer: nobody told them to look. Marketing reporting tools surface Google rankings, social engagement, Yelp stars. They do not yet surface which AI surfaces named your clinic this week. So the question never gets asked.

The good news is that the test takes ten minutes and requires nothing more than a browser.

3 · A 10-minute self-check (5 steps)

1. Pick five patient-intent queries. Treatment + city: "best botox in [your city]". Trust: "safest place for botox in [your city]". Comparative: "[your medspa] vs [a known local competitor]". Cost: "how much does botox cost in [your city]". Location-led: "[your city] medical spa".
2. Run each query in ChatGPT (default model, web tools on). Open chatgpt.com. Make sure web search is enabled (the default in recent versions). Paste each of the five queries. Note: is your medspa named? Where in the list? Was your URL cited?
3. Repeat in Claude. Open claude.ai. Make sure web search is enabled. Paste the same five queries. Compare which medspas Claude names. They will not be identical to ChatGPT.
4. Repeat in Gemini, check Google AI Overviews, then check Perplexity. Run the queries in gemini.google.com (the standalone Gemini surface). Then run them as plain Google searches and look at the AI Overview block at the top of the SERP. Finally run them in perplexity.ai. These are different surfaces and they will not agree.
5. Score yourself. For each of the five surfaces, count: how many of the five queries named you, and at what rank position. If you were named in 0 of 25 (5 queries × 5 surfaces), you have no current AI visibility. If you were named in 6–13 of 25, you have inconsistent visibility. If you were named in 19+ of 25, you are doing better than most medspas in your metro.

4 · What the result usually means

• Named in 0–4 of 25. No meaningful AI visibility. You are not in the answer set patients see. The cost is real but invisible: queries patients are running today end with your competitor’s name, not yours.
• Named in 5–13 of 25. Inconsistent. You appear on some surfaces and not others, or on some queries and not others. Usually fixable inside 60–90 days because the surfaces disagree about you: meaning some already trust you, and the rest can be pulled in line.
• Named in 14–19 of 25. Strong presence. The remaining gap is usually one surface (often Google AI Overviews, because of its idiosyncratic citation pipeline) or one query intent (often trust-led).
• Named in 20+ of 25. Best-in-metro. You are doing what most clinics in your zip are not. The remaining work is defensive: monitoring monthly so competitors do not overtake you.

5 · What to do next

If the self-check returned a low score, the question is which fixes move it. That is a measurement problem; the longer answer lives in our methodology and the deeper how-to is at how to rank your medspa on ChatGPT.

If you want the structured version (31 query types, all five surfaces, scored and ranked) that is the AI visibility audit. The five-query self-test is a quick sanity check. The full audit is the measurement.