How Often AI Names West London Dental Practices: A 2026 Category Study

Last updated: 15 September 2026

When someone in London asks an AI assistant which dentist to see, what actually gets said back, and to whom? There is remarkably little public evidence on this. Most of what exists is agency marketing or generic advice with no numbers behind it. This piece fills that gap with a plain count. Over a two day window in mid September 2026, we tracked how ChatGPT and Google's AI-generated answers (AI Overviews and AI Mode) responded to 75 questions a real patient might ask about finding a dentist in and around Kensington and west London, and logged how often each of 40 tracked practices was named. Every practice was scored against that same 1,915-answer denominator, so the numbers below compare like with like. The finding worth remembering: even the most-named practice in the whole set shows up in fewer than one answer in four.

In short

• 40 London-area dental practices were tracked across 75 questions, with every practice scored against the same 1,915-answer denominator.
• The most-named practice in the set, Kensington Dental Practice, is still only named in 24.65% of answers, and accounts for 19.87% of all the practice mentions recorded across the set.
• The median practice in the tracked set is named in under 1% of answers (0.94%), so naming falls off a cliff below the top handful.
• On the broadest questions tested, the "best dentists in London" tier, not one of the 40 tracked practices appears in any of the 153 answers returned.
• nhs.uk is the single most retrieved source behind these answers, appearing in 16.14% of them (707 retrievals), ahead of every practice or directory site checked.

The top 15, by how often AI names them

Ranked by how often AI names each practice across the tracked questions, and how much of the resulting answer that practice's mention takes up.

Where the other 25 stand

The table above is the top slice of a much longer tail. Across all 40 tracked practices, the median naming rate is 0.94%, meaning half the field is named in under one answer in a hundred. Outside the top 15, the ceiling drops sharply: the best any practice manages once you're off that list is 1.93% (Orthosmile, at rank 16), followed by Queen's Gate Dental Practice and Origin Orthodontics, tied at 1.20% each. Below that the numbers thin out fast, down to single mentions across the full window. Five tracked practices were not named in any answer during this window at all, a reminder that appearing in this category is not guaranteed by being a registered, findable practice with a working website. It has to be earned answer by answer.

The one number that matters more than any ranking

The most useful finding here is not who sits at the top of the table. It is that nobody really owns this category. The most-named practice among the 40, Kensington Dental Practice, still turns up in fewer than one answer in four, at 24.65%. That is a long way short of the kind of dominance a single well-known chain or a national brand might have in a more consolidated market. And on the broadest questions tested, the plain "best dentists in London" tier, not one of the 40 tracked practices appears in any of the 153 answers returned. That is not a close contest that one practice happens to be losing. That tier is structurally empty. Nobody has claimed it, which is a genuinely different situation from one where a market leader is simply hard to beat.

Which treatments AI talks about most

The questions in this tracking set are grouped into eleven treatment areas, from routine hygiene to Invisalign to urgent same-day care. Looked at as a category rather than by any single practice, some treatment areas generate far more AI conversation than others.

Invisalign and straightening questions produced the most AI answer volume of any treatment area tracked, at 224 answers, roughly 70% more than the quietest area, teeth grinding, TMJ and facial aesthetics, at 132. Implants and NHS access sit close behind Invisalign, which tells you where patient curiosity concentrates once someone is already talking to an AI assistant about their teeth: cost, straightening and the NHS-to-private question, well ahead of urgent or anxiety-led queries. Coverage across the tracked practices in each of these areas is thin and uneven rather than dominated by a small group; this dataset does not support naming which practices lead by treatment area, only how much conversation each area draws.

Where AI answers actually come from

Every answer an AI assistant gives is built on something it retrieved. Here is what got retrieved most often across the tracked questions.

Three things stand out. First, the single most retrieved source behind these answers is not a practice, a directory or a review platform. It is nhs.uk, retrieved in 16.14% of answers, ahead of every other domain checked. Official and NHS content still carries more weight in this category than any individual practice's own marketing. Second, practice-run domains are being read directly rather than only surfaced through third-party directories: four separate practice sites appear among the eight most retrieved sources, together outdrawing the three dedicated directory sites checked. That matters because it shows a practice's own pages can be pulled into an AI answer without a directory in between, provided the content is structured in a way the answer can use. Third, the community layer, reviews, video, social and forum content, is retrieved far less often than official or practice content, and video currently outdraws forum discussion in this category: YouTube was retrieved more often than Reddit, and and of those four, YouTube named none of the 40 tracked practices in the pages that got pulled in. If you're deciding where to put effort on the community side of this category, that gap points to video and structured owned content before Reddit threads.

Three rules shaping this category that nobody has put in one place

Google stopped showing FAQ answers directly in Search. From 7 May 2026, Google deprecated FAQ rich results in Search entirely; a page can still carry FAQPage structured data with no harm done, but it will not earn the expandable question-and-answer box in results the way it used to. This followed an earlier August 2023 restriction that limited FAQ rich results to government and health sites only, before the feature was removed for everyone. Source: Removing the FAQ rich result, Google Search documentation updates.

No UK dental practice can currently buy its way into a ChatGPT answer. OpenAI's advertising policy treats health services, including dental services, as a restricted category that is only approvable on a case-by-case basis, and that approval path is US-only; health service ads outside the US are generally prohibited under the policy, even as OpenAI has expanded its ChatGPT ads pilot into other markets including the UK. Whatever presence a practice gets in an AI answer to "which dentist should I go to" currently has to be earned through what is published and structured, not bought. Source: Ad policies, OpenAI.

The General Dental Council and the Advertising Standards Authority both constrain what a practice can claim about itself. GDC guidance requires that advertising be accurate and not misleading, that a practice display its GDC registration number, that nobody without specialist registration use a title implying specialist status, that no practice compare its own skills or qualifications against those of other dental professionals's, and that cosmetic treatment claims make clear the treatment may not suit every patient. The ASA has upheld complaints against dental advertising before: in a 2022 ruling against Dental Centre Turkey UK Ltd, the ASA upheld three complaints, including that the company could not substantiate a UK head office and that its ads misleadingly implied it carried out the dental work itself, and ordered that the ads not appear again in that form. Sources: Guidance on advertising, General Dental Council; Dental Centre Turkey UK Ltd, ASA ruling A22-1157178, 16 November 2022.

What this study can't tell you

This is a snapshot, not a permanent scorecard. It's directional, not definitive. Specifically, it answers:

• How often each of 40 London-area dental practices was named across a fixed set of 75 questions, in a two day window in September 2026.
• How much of the resulting answer text each practice's mention took up, when it was named at all.
• Which treatment topics generated the most AI answer volume in this category, and which the least.
• Which sources AI answers actually retrieved and how often, across official, practice, directory and community content.

It cannot show a causal link between how often a practice is named and how many patients it goes on to see. Naming rate is a measure of what the AI said, not of what a patient then did. It also cannot tell any single practice that it should try to appear in every answer, everywhere. Some tiers of this category, the broadest "best in London" questions especially, currently look structurally hard for anyone to enter, tracked practice or not; chasing universal coverage in a tier nobody has cracked is a different problem from improving your standing in the tiers where practices clearly do get named. Treat the figures here as something to check yourself against periodically, not a target to hit once and move on from.

What this means if you run a dental practice in London

If you run a practice, three things in this data are worth acting on rather than just reading.

The category has no runaway leader, which means the gap between "not named" and "regularly named" is smaller than it looks. Even the top practice sits under 25%. Check where your own practice's pages currently sit against the questions patients are actually asking, rather than assuming the field is already sewn up.

Official and NHS content, plus a handful of practices' own pages, are being retrieved directly far more than directory listings are. Make sure your own site states plain facts, address, hours, NHS acceptance, prices, in a form a page can be read and lifted from, rather than only living in a directory profile you don't control.

Community content, particularly video, is retrieved in this category and currently names no tracked practice at all. That is open ground. If you're going to put effort into video or community content this year, treat it as a real channel worth building deliberately, not an afterthought behind your website.

Frequently asked questions

Does one dental practice dominate how AI answers questions about London dentists? No. The most-named practice among the 40 tracked is still only named in 24.65% of answers, and the median practice across the full set is named in under 1% of answers, so naming spreads thin rather than concentrating on one practice.

Is there a type of question AI simply won't answer with a specific practice? Yes. On the broadest "best dentists in London" style questions, none of the 40 tracked practices appeared in any of the 153 answers logged for that question type.

What does AI actually pull from when it answers dentist-related questions? Most often nhs.uk, retrieved in 16.14% of answers, ahead of any single practice, directory or review site checked. Several practices' own pages were also retrieved directly, alongside three dedicated directory sites.

Which treatments generate the most AI conversation in this category? Invisalign and straightening questions produced the most answers of any treatment area tracked, at 224, about 70% more than the quietest area, teeth grinding, TMJ and facial aesthetics, at 132.

Can a practice pay to appear more often in these answers? Not currently. OpenAI's advertising policy restricts health service ads, including dental services, to a US-only approval path, so no UK practice can buy placement in a ChatGPT answer as things stand.

Sources

Every source below supports a specific claim in the body. Nothing is listed for weight.

• OpenAI, "Ad policies," https://openai.com/policies/ad-policies/. Canonical source for the health services advertising restriction and the US-only approval path for dental services.
• Google Search Central, "Removing the FAQ rich result," https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/faqpage. Records the 7 May 2026 removal from Search and the August 2023 restriction to government and health sites. The URL now redirects to Google's documentation updates, because the FAQPage page itself was removed in June 2026.
• General Dental Council, "Guidance on advertising," https://www.gdc-uk.org/standards-guidance/standards-and-guidance/gdc-guidance-for-dental-professionals. Sets out the accuracy, registration-number, specialist-title and comparative-claim requirements described above.
• Advertising Standards Authority, ruling on Dental Centre Turkey UK Ltd, A22-1157178, https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/dental-centre-turkey-uk-ltd-a22-1157178-dental-centre-turkey-uk-ltd.html. The 2022 ruling in which three complaints were upheld, cited above for what the regulator treats as a misleading dental claim.