This article was written for Greystone.Net by Jessica Levco, a freelance healthcare writer and event strategist.

Major Health Partners (MHP), a community hospital in Shelbyville, Indiana (population: 20,000) has a 4.8-star Google rating with more than 2,000 reviews. 

Wow!

Don’t you wish your hospital could say the same?

But the number of stars and reviews didn’t just “happen.” It was because the hospital marketing department turned its attention toward generative engine optimization (GEO). This required automated processes, consistent data management across platforms and a commitment to building verified, trusted online presence everywhere patients — and AI — might look.

At the Healthcare Interactive Conference in Las Vegas, Gena Linville, Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Major Health Partners, and Brittany Young, Senior Account Executive at rater8, discussed the strategy they’ve used to outperform all their competitors on Google.

“Great care doesn’t matter if patients can't find you,” Young says. “AI-generated results are your patients’ new first impression. If your data isn’t structured, verified and visible, you’re not in the conversation.”

According to a report by rater8, 31% of patients now use AI-powered Google searches to research providers. In addition, 51% of patients are willing to rely on AI tools over traditional search engine results. When AI generates those overview summaries at the top of search results, 80% of people are reading them, says Bain & Company.

How AI Search Works

AI doesn’t just pull from Google. It aggregates data from Healthgrades, Vitals, WebMD, Facebook, Glassdoor, hospital websites and verified review platforms. When information is inconsistent across those sources — different star ratings, conflicting photos, outdated bios — it creates confusion for patients and AI algorithms.

“If you have a really good cardiac surgeon, but he isn’t visible and you can’t find him or see the reviews, then he loses that source of trust,” Young says. “AI algorithms will overlook him too, because they don’t see him as a source of trust.”

In fact, it was an MHP surgeon who sparked the initiative to take a closer look at their star ratings after he Googled himself and discovered he only had three Google reviews and his star rating was a 2.1. He was understandably unhappy, as this was not an accurate reflection of the high-quality care he provided, nor his typical patient experience.

His next move was to call marketing to see what he could do to change his rating.

“At first, he asked if I could ‘change Google’,” Linville says. “I explained the only way to ‘change Google’ was to collect more reviews so it would be more reflective of the care he was providing.”

When it came time to tackle the GEO project, Linville and her team started with only that surgeon’s service line. They trialed the program in April 2021, and providers immediately began seeing improvements in their overall star ratings.

The surgeon who sparked the initiative became a physician champion for the project, and within months, other departments took notice of the results. MHP’s leadership was so pleased with the trial results, they rolled out automated review requests tied to their EMR system across all departments and service lines in January 2022.

By the end of their hospital’s first full year of undertaking this initiative, they’d increased their online reviews by 6,618%, built 3,330+ new online reviews (of which 93% were 5 stars) and boosted their overall online rating from 3.60 to 4.87 stars.

From SEO to GEO

Traditional search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on keywords, click-through rates and website rankings. Generative engine optimization (GEO) builds on that foundation but focuses on credibility, structure and trust.

“Think of SEO as the bones of your hospital’s online presence,” Young says. “GEO is the house sitting on that foundation. It measures visibility in AI-generated responses. It’s tailored to you. It knows your search history and behaviors.”

This means hospital marketers can’t manage the organization’s reputation from one platform. Young called this the “modern visibility vortex,” where data has to be structured, verified and consistent across every platform where patients (and AI) might look.

MHP shared its framework for GEO success:

• Reviews (volume matters)
• Ratings (star ratings across platforms)
• Recency (new reviews signal active, trustworthy practices)
• Responses (engage with feedback, positive and negative)

• Credibility (Is this verified feedback from trusted sources?)
• Visibility (Where is the feedback showing up?)

MHP has been using rater8 since 2021 because GEO and online visibility are an ongoing effort, especially because AI bots place a high value on fresh content.

Now, when you search “best hospital near me,” MHP shows up prominently in AI-generated overviews, oftentimes even before much larger competitors. The AI summary highlights its cancer care, cardiology and orthopedics services, pulling from verified sources including its website, review platforms and LinkedIn.

“Having a strong framework for GEO success allows us to show up in a way that reflects who we are,” says Linville. “When our strategy is in place, people can easily see the quality of care we provide through the voices of our patients — and that visibility helps us compete at the highest level, even alongside much larger hospitals.”