The Sources AI Trusts When Recommending Dental Clinics (Q2 2026)

Highlights

• The dataset: The analysis behind this study covers over 90,000 AI source citations from prompts specific to the dental clinic industry, with AI responses from four AI models run in 12 countries during Q2 2026.
• Reddit makes up 28% of ChatGPT's citations: Its single most-cited source, by a 9x margin over anything else.
• Yelp makes up 8% of Grok's citations: With Reddit (8%) close behind, its top five are all global review or community sites.
• 78% local-language rate in the Netherlands: Versus just 29% in Mexico, the market matters more than the model.
• 6% average overlap between any two models: About 94% of top sources differ, with overlap falling to 4% among the three high-volume models.
• 76% of Microsoft Copilot's citations are from commercial domains: Clinic and directory sites, versus 36% for ChatGPT.

Which sources should you target to get cited as a dental clinic brand?

The four models each lean on a distinctly different set of top-cited domains. Each model's five most-cited sources, with their share of that model's total citations:

ChatGPT is extraordinarily concentrated, more than a quarter of everything it cites is Reddit, and no other source breaks 4%. Microsoft Copilot is the opposite: its single most-cited domain is just 2.1%, with citations spread thinly across hundreds of local directories. Grok sits in between, anchored by a handful of global review platforms.

How have AI source rankings changed over time in the dental clinic industry?

We split the roughly 16-week window at its midpoint (early May 2026) and ranked the top domains by their share of citations within each half.

Nearly every global review and social aggregator that anchored the first half, Yelp's mobile site, Facebook, WhatClinic, Instagram, Trustpilot, fell out of the top 25 in the second half, while their slots filled with national clinic directories (dentego.fr, doctolib.fr, dentalclinics.nl). Reddit held the #1 position in both halves. Track the current picture in the live AI visibility rankings.

What type of content do AI models cite for dental clinics?

We classified every cited domain into content categories. Commercial sites, clinic homepages and for-profit directories, dominate the category overall, which is unsurprising for a local service industry. But the mix differs sharply by model.

ChatGPT is the clear outlier. It is the only model whose citations are majority non-commercial, user-generated content (41.5%, almost all Reddit) is its single biggest category, and it cites far more reference material (14.8%) than any peer. Microsoft Copilot is the mirror image: three-quarters of its citations are commercial, with almost no user-generated, editorial, or reference content. Grok splits nearly evenly between commercial directories and user-generated reviews (50.1% / 39.0%). The gap between Microsoft Copilot's and ChatGPT's commercial share, 76.0% vs. 35.9%, is large and unambiguous.

Do AI models cite local-language content for dental clinics?

The market drives localization far more than the model does. Using the source's country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) as a proxy for local-language content, we measured the share of citations pointing to a local-ccTLD source in each non-English market. Spanish-language markets were scored against their own national ccTLD (.ar for Argentina.mx for Mexico.es for Spain).

Across all non-English markets, 54.4% of citations point to a local-ccTLD source. But the average hides a sharp split: Germanic and Northern-European markets cluster high (66-78%), while Spanish-speaking markets sit near 30-40%. The likeliest explanation is structural, not behavioral, the Netherlands (.nl), Germany (.de), and Sweden (.se) have dense, mature national directories of dentists, whereas Spanish-language clinics frequently publish on .com domains that our method counts as non-local.

Which AI model relies most on local sources for dental clinics?

Holding the market constant, the models differ in how local they go. Every cell meets the sample threshold except Google AI Overview, which produced enough citations only in Spanish.

Microsoft Copilot is the most aggressively local in markets with strong national directories, 91-97% local in French, Dutch, and Swedish, consistent with its overall reliance on clinic-directory sites. Grok is the most globalized, dipping below the pack in Spanish (28%) and Swedish (54%) where it reaches for international review platforms. ChatGPT lands in a narrow band (39-56%) across every language, reflecting that a large chunk of its citations go to Reddit, a .com counted as non-local everywhere. If your priority is being cited as a local dental practice, Microsoft Copilot is the most receptive system.

Should dental clinics optimize for each AI model separately?

Almost not at all. We built each model's ranked list of its top-20 most-cited domains and measured how much each pair holds in common, shared domains divided by all the domains the two lists name between them, for all six model pairs. The average overlap is 5.8%, ranging from 2.6% to 11.1%. Setting aside Google AI Overview, whose 391 cited sources make its top-20 list unstable, the average across the three high-volume models drops to 4.4%.

Among the three high-volume models, no pair shares more than two of twenty domains. Grok and ChatGPT share only Reddit and tandlakare.se; Grok and Microsoft Copilot share a single domain (doctoralia.com.mx). A dental clinic optimizing for one AI model is absent from roughly 95% of the domains the other models prefer, winning a Grok citation tells you almost nothing about ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot.

How many sources does each AI model cite per answer?

The models differ enormously in how many sources they cite per answer. Grok is by far the most source-hungry; ChatGPT the most economical.

Grok cites roughly six times as many sources per response as ChatGPT. For a clinic, that cuts two ways: Grok offers far more citation slots to compete for, but each individual citation carries proportionally less weight; ChatGPT cites few sources, so earning one of its handful is both harder and more valuable. ChatGPT produced 3,893 responses but cited sources in only 1,081 of them, most ChatGPT answers cited nothing at all.

Context

This analysis draws from Temso's AI visibility monitoring platform, which tracks how brands appear in AI model responses across ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, xAI's Grok, and Google AI Overview. It covers how these four systems cited web sources when answering dental-clinic prompts between March 10 and June 29, 2026, spanning 12 markets (Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and seven languages.

The findings describe which sources AI models cite, not which dental practices or treatments are best. A high citation share means a domain is frequently surfaced by a model, not that it is authoritative or accurate. One coverage caveat shapes how far the numbers travel: Google AI Overview produced only 391 cited sources here, too few to characterize reliably. These findings are most relevant to dental-practice owners, dental marketing agencies, and healthcare SEO strategists.

Methodology

How we measured this

We tracked four AI models responding to dental-clinic prompts in local languages across 12 markets: 9,914 responses and over 90,000 cited source citations. A "citation" is a web source a model explicitly surfaced in support of an answer; we count only sources flagged as cited. For each model we ranked domains by cited-citation count and reported the top five with each domain's share. Cross-model overlap was measured using Jaccard similarity on each pair's top-20 most-cited domains, averaged across all six pairs, reported both with and without Google AI Overview (whose thin n=391 base makes its list unstable). Domain content categories (commercial, UGC, editorial, reference, institutional) were assigned from a global domain registry; the Microsoft Copilot-versus-ChatGPT commercial-share gap was validated with a two-proportion z-test (z = 56.3, p < 0.001).

Localization is measured by a country-code-domain proxy (the source records carry no detected content language), computing the share of citations on each market's national ccTLD; English-language markets are excluded, and the proxy undercounts local content on generic .com domains, so Spanish-market rates are conservative floors. Temporal analysis split the observation period at its midpoint (2026-05-04) and ranked domains by within-half citation share rather than raw volume; model coverage varied across the observation window, so the movement finding is read as suggestive rather than proven re-ranking. Source breadth is the mean cited sources per response with a 95% confidence interval, over responses citing at least one source. Google AI Overview (391 citations across 42 responses) is flagged directional throughout and excluded from headline comparisons; all other reported per-model and per-language cells meet the minimum sample threshold.

Frequently asked questions

Do different AI models cite the same sources for dental questions?

No, barely. Any two models share only about 5.8% of their top-20 most-cited domains on average, and among the three high-volume models that drops to roughly 4.4%. So about 95% of the sources one model relies on are absent from another's top tier. There is no single set of AI-trusted dental sources; there are several distinct ones.

Which sources does each model favor for dentists?

Grok favors global review and community platforms (Yelp, Reddit, Facebook, WhatClinic). ChatGPT is dominated by Reddit, 28.4% of all its citations, plus a thin layer of niche directories. Microsoft Copilot funnels into local clinic directories (yably.com.ar, dentego.fr, Doctoralia), spread thinly across hundreds of national sites. Google AI Overview cited too little here to characterize confidently.

Does language matter for a dental clinic getting cited?

Yes, but the market matters more than the model. In the Netherlands and Germany, roughly 73-78% of citations go to local-country domains; in Spain, Mexico, and Argentina, only about 29-40% do. Part of that gap is that Spanish-language clinics often publish on .com domains, which our method counts as non-local, so those figures are conservative.

Which AI model is most likely to cite a local clinic's website?

Microsoft Copilot. Three-quarters of its citations (76.0%) are commercial clinic and directory sites, and it reaches 91-97% local-domain rates in French, Dutch, and Swedish markets. If your priority is being cited as a local dental practice, Microsoft Copilot is the most receptive system.

Which model cites the most sources, and does that help my dental practice?

Grok, by a wide margin, about 28.4 cited sources per response, roughly six times ChatGPT's 4.5. More sources mean more slots to compete for in Grok, but each carries less weight. ChatGPT cites few sources and often none at all, which makes each of its slots both harder to win and more valuable.

Is being on Reddit worth it for a dental clinic?

For ChatGPT, enormously. Reddit is ChatGPT's single most-cited domain at 28.4% of all its citations, nearly nine times its next source, and it ranks among Grok's top sources too. User-generated discussion is a real path to AI visibility, but mainly for the models that lean on it; Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overview barely cite it.

Did the sources AI models cite change over the period?

The citation mix shifted toward local directories in the second half, as global aggregators like Yelp, Facebook, WhatClinic, and Instagram dropped out of the top tier. We read it as a suggestive shift, not a proven trend.

What should a dental clinic do with this?

Optimize per model, not in general. There is no universal AI-visibility strategy: local national directories help with Microsoft Copilot, global review and community platforms help with Grok, and a strong Reddit footprint plus reference content helps with ChatGPT. Treat each model as a separate channel with its own preferred sources.