Med spas and skin clinics are where AI was most careful. Claude with live web search named at least one clinic in 43 of our 50 questions (86%), the lowest of the 10 industries in our US study, and hedged on 14%, the highest. Price was the hole: 5 of the 6 lip filler price questions named no clinic at all.
The answers were built from booking and review directories, led by RealSelf (34 citations) and Fresha (cited in 12 answers), and from clinics' own treatment guides. Nearly one source in five (18.1%) was a spam-style page on an unrelated website, many of them near-identical lip filler cost guides. Nobody owns this market: the five names that came up most took 7.4% of mentions, and 92.5% of the 161 clinics and doctors named appeared only once.
What we asked
50 questions written the way US buyers ask them. The 40 English questions were set in eight cities, 5 each: Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Nashville, Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle. By intent: 16 specific, 12 compare, 8 price and 4 trust. The 10 Spanish questions were set in San Antonio and Charlotte, 5 each, tagged "mixed". Six of them, word for word:
| Question | Language | Intent |
|---|---|---|
| Best med spa in Los Angeles for Botox? | English | compare |
| How much do lip fillers cost in Atlanta and where is safe? | English | price |
| Where can I get laser hair removal for dark skin in Nashville? | English | specific |
| Which med spa in Orlando has a real doctor on site and good reviews? | English | trust |
| Mejor dermatólogo en Charlotte que hable español (best Spanish-speaking dermatologist in Charlotte) | Spanish | mixed |
| ¿Dónde hacen depilación láser segura en San Antonio? (where can I get safe laser hair removal in San Antonio?) | Spanish | mixed |
How often AI named a clinic
Claude named at least one clinic in 86% of answers and 4.1 per answer when it named any, against 93.8% and 5.2 across all industries. It hedged on 7 questions.
| Question type | Questions | Named anyone | Clinics per answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compare (Botox, best dermatologist, hair transplant) | 12 | 100% | 5.2 |
| Trust (a real doctor on site, good reviews) | 4 | 100% | 5.0 |
| Specific (acne scars, melasma, laser for dark skin) | 16 | 94% | 3.3 |
| Price (lip fillers, HydraFacial) | 8 | 50% | 2.5 |
| Spanish (all types) | 10 | 80% | 4.4 |
Price questions split in half: 4 of 8 English price questions named no one. Lip fillers were the clearest case. We asked about them 6 times (Atlanta, Dallas, Philadelphia and Chicago in English, San Antonio and Charlotte in Spanish) and 5 answers named no clinic. The Chicago answer named two, then said they "appear in inconsistent or unverifiable listings, so I wouldn't rely on them". Of the 7 hedges, 5 were lip filler prices, one was an affordable HydraFacial in Chicago and one was laser hair removal for dark skin in Nashville.
About one name in seven (14.2%) was an individual doctor, usually taken from a RealSelf profile. Counting clinics only, answers named 3.5 per answer.
Where the answers came from
Claude cited 463 sources, 9.3 per answer, from 205 websites, sorted into the main study's nine types.
| Type of source | Med spas (463) | All 10 industries (4,587) |
|---|---|---|
| Directories, marketplaces and "best of" list sites | 35.4% | 37.3% |
| Clinics' own websites and other sites | 35.2% | 29.0% |
| Off-topic hosts (spam-style pages on unrelated sites) | 18.1% | 15.9% |
| News and media | 7.6% | 11.0% |
| Social media and forums | 1.5% | 1.6% |
| Press releases | 1.3% | 1.2% |
| Review platforms | 0.9% | 3.2% |
| Government sites and Wikipedia | 0.0% | 1.0% |
Directories appeared in 40 of the 50 answers. Clinic websites were often cited for treatment guides, such as pages on laser hair removal for darker skin, in several cities at once. These were the sites cited most:
| Site | Citations | Answers | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| realself.com | 34 | 8 | Cosmetic treatment reviews and doctor profiles |
| fresha.com | 18 | 12 | Salon and spa booking directory, with city pages |
| lantern.llc | 11 | 6 | Local business directory |
| consentz.com | 10 | 4 | Clinic software company with melasma clinic lists by town |
| store.culturamed.com | 9 | 4 | A dermatology practice's guides on laser hair removal for dark skin |
| medifind.com | 8 | 5 | Doctor directory |
| groupon.com | 8 | 7 | Deal site, used for HydraFacial and Botox prices |
The spam layer was a little heavier than for dentists: 84 sources from 38 unrelated websites, in 29 answers, and most of the sources in 5 of them. Described without naming the sites, which are often victims: a university server in Portugal carrying lip filler cost guides (24 citations in 5 answers), near-identical lip filler cost titles on a Mexican tech distributor's subdomain, a staging library server and a Kazakh checklist site, a hardware supplier's subdomain and a state government subdomain asking "how much does a hydrafacial cost". In Philadelphia, 38.3% of sources were pages like these.
Review sites were talked about, not read. 5 answers told buyers to check Yelp and 8 pointed to Google reviews or Maps; none cited a Yelp or Google business page. In at least 28 answers Claude warned its sources were marketing, sponsored or low quality.
The clinics named most often
The 50 answers named 161 different clinics and doctors in 176 mentions, and 92.5% were named only once. These were named most often in our answers:
| Clinic, as named | Answers (of 50) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Cultura Dermatology | 3 | Los Angeles (1) and Seattle (2), for dark skin laser and melasma |
| Dallas Center for Dermatology and Aesthetics | 3 | Dallas only (acne scars, HydraFacial, CoolSculpting) |
| Ideal Image | 3 | Dallas, Orlando and Nashville |
| House of Skin MD | 2 | Los Angeles |
| New U Med Spa | 2 | Orlando |
The top five took 7.4% of mentions, and no name came up more than 3 times. Read the top line with care. Cultura Dermatology's guides on darker skin were cited in four cities, but both Seattle answers said its results were for the Washington, DC area and "aren't relevant to Seattle". Our reading: the search matched Washington the state with Washington, DC. The others are more local. Dallas Center for Dermatology and Aesthetics was cited through its own treatment and before-and-after pages. Ideal Image, a national chain, was named from pages about its local branches. Expert content travels across cities; to be named for a city, the page has to say where you are.
Not a ranking. Counts from one assistant on one day, 21 October 2026, not our ranking or an endorsement. A clinic missing here may be excellent, and the lists change from day to day.
City by city
Each city had 5 questions, so these are notes, not rankings.
| City | Questions | Named anyone | Per answer | Off-topic sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 5 | 100% | 4.0 | 10.9% |
| Seattle | 5 | 100% | 4.4 | 2.1% |
| Orlando | 5 | 100% | 3.0 | 14.6% |
| Nashville | 5 | 80% | 5.0 | 13.0% |
| Dallas | 5 | 80% | 4.5 | 21.3% |
| Atlanta | 5 | 80% | 4.3 | 28.3% |
| Chicago | 5 | 80% | 4.0 | 26.7% |
| Philadelphia | 5 | 80% | 3.3 | 38.3% |
- Atlanta: the lip filler answer's 9 sources were all off-topic hosts, while the CoolSculpting answer's 10 were all RealSelf pages.
- Dallas: the acne scar answer set aside directory pages for Dallas, Wisconsin and Dallas, Pennsylvania.
- Chicago: the "best dermatologist" answer flagged a review site page that listed doctors in Chicago, Indiana.
What the Spanish questions showed
| English (40) | Spanish (10) | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers naming at least one clinic | 87.5% | 80% |
| Clinics per answer, when any | 4.0 | 4.4 |
| Hedged | 12.5% | 20% |
| Sources with a "best" or "top" style title | 17.2% | 6.6% |
24 of the 91 sources behind Spanish answers (26.4%) were Spanish pages, a little above the study's 23.8%, but 9 of those 24 came from one Mexican doctor directory in a single answer, and only 5 of the 10 answers cited any Spanish page. Asked for the best clinic for skin spots in San Antonio, Claude answered in Russian, said it found only clinics in Mexico, and described four of them in Puebla, Tijuana, Monterrey and Guadalajara. The Charlotte lip filler answer used prices from Spain and the UK, and three of its sources were pages from a cosmetics brand whose name starts with Charlotte. The San Antonio laser answer set aside results from Chile, Spain and Puerto Rico. The Spanish-speaking dermatologist questions were answered from health plan provider directories that list languages, and from one practice with a Spanish section on its site.
Three real answers
How much do lip fillers cost in Atlanta and where is safe?
The search didn't turn up any Atlanta-specific prices or clinic recommendations. The results are mostly generic guides from low-quality sites, so treat them as rough background only.
Best place for CoolSculpting in Atlanta?
I couldn't find a definitive "best" CoolSculpting provider in Atlanta. The results are RealSelf directory listings, which show ratings and review counts but no official ranking.
¿Dónde hacen depilación láser segura en San Antonio?
No encontré una lista confiable de clínicas de depilación láser en San Antonio, Texas. Muchos resultados son de Chile, España o Puerto Rico, así que los descarté.
What a med spa or skin clinic should do
- Complete your RealSelf profiles, clinic and doctors. RealSelf was the most cited site, and answers quoted its ratings, review counts, addresses and years of experience. One CoolSculpting answer was built from nothing else.
- Keep Fresha, ClassPass and your booking listings current. Fresha reached 12 answers, the most of any site, and the Los Angeles "doctor on site" answer quoted ClassPass ratings.
- Publish a price page per treatment. Lip filler per syringe, Botox per unit, HydraFacial per session, with the product names. Price questions named no one half the time, and the answers fell back on spam cost guides. One Los Angeles answer quoted a clinic's Botox prices by units straight from a directory listing.
- Say who injects, in plain text. "Doctor on site" answers took physician claims from clinics' own words: "physician-owned and operated", "medical staff on-site (RN/MD)". Name the medical director and the injectors, with their license type.
- Write one page per condition and city. Laser hair removal for dark skin, melasma, acne scars, each with the city and state, the device you use and who treats. The most cited guides were exactly these, from a practice in another city.
- Write the city and state everywhere. Answers mixed up Washington state with Washington, DC, Dallas with Dallas, Wisconsin, and Charlotte with a cosmetics brand. "Seattle, Washington" on the page costs nothing.
- If you serve Spanish speakers, write Spanish pages per main treatment, and set the language field on health plan and booking directories.
- Skip paid "best med spa" awards. One Los Angeles answer pointed out that a clinic's "Best Med Spa in LA" title came from a paid press release. Then measure the same questions monthly on ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
What we'd do for you, and what we don't promise
We do this work for US clinics, remotely from Dubai, with traditional SEO included and ChatGPT and Gemini (Google AI) tracked on every plan. It starts with a free AI check: 10 real client questions and the clinics AI names instead of you. The AI Visibility Audit (30 questions, 4 AI tools, 3 competitors, screenshots and a 90-day plan) is USD 549. Monthly plans are USD 1,249 (Foundation), USD 2,349 (Growth) and USD 4,399 (Authority), month to month, with no lock-in and no setup fee. Details at adjoltz.com/us.
In the first 30 days of any plan, if AI does not name you for at least 3 commercial questions on the list you approved, or you are unhappy for any other reason, we refund 100% of what you paid, in cash, within 7 working days (guarantee rules). We don't promise a top spot on any assistant, rankings, paid places on "best of" lists, bookings, or a US office. We do not have one.
Method and limits. 50 med spa and dermatology questions from our 500-question US AI visibility study 2026, each sent once, word for word, to Claude with Anthropic's live web search tool on 21 October 2026, between 21:31 and 23:12 UTC. Source types were coded by us with hand-checked lists, so the off-topic share is a floor, and simple name matching may make the "named once" share slightly high. One assistant, one day, one run: Pew Research Center found 44% of US adults use ChatGPT and 6% use Claude. We did not check that every named clinic is licensed or open. Every question and its numbers: study data (CSV).