How AI Search Archetypes are Impacting Patient Discovery

TL;DR: Patients no longer follow a straight line from symptom to provider. People bounce between AI tools, search engines, social media, and reviews to explore symptoms, understand care options, and evaluate providers.

Yext Report: The Rise of AI Search Archetypes reveals six distinct search mindsets shaping how patients discover care.

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For healthcare marketers, this shift means one thing: you need to show up with the right information, in the right place, at the right time.

Here’s what’s changing, and what you can do to stay ahead of competitors.

How do patients find care in 2025?

For decades, the path from health concern to care decision was predictable: search Google, find a nearby provider, book an appointment. Today? The traditional “Google-to-provider” path is gone.

Patients now jump between platforms – asking ChatGPT about symptoms, browsing TikTok for reviews, and comparing providers through Google’s AI Overviews.

A recent Annenberg Public Policy Center health survey found that 79% of U.S. adults say they’re likely to look online for the answer to a question about a health symptom or condition.

When starting their search today, patients might:

• Ask ChatGPT for tips on supplements or vitamins support recovery after illness
• Search TikTok for skincare product reviews after a breakout
• Compare “dentists that take payment plans” in Google’s AI-organized search results
• Request a diabetic meal plan with a grocery list from an AI nutritionist agent.
• Ask Claude for “safe treatments for skin cancer” before seeing a provider

Stakes for healthcare organizations are high: If your providers, services, and educational resources don’t appear in AI search results, you miss the opportunity to inspire an appointment long before a patient lands on your website.

AI is embedded in everyday healthcare decisions

These aren’t one-off behaviors. The shift to AI as a daily tool for health questions is already happening, and fast.

Yext research shows that 75% of people* use AI search tools more than they did a year ago, and 43% use them daily. This shift means AI isn’t just a curiosity – it’s shaping perceptions and choices. And these aren't casual queries.

Patients are asking AI highly specific questions once reserved for providers and vetted sources:

• “Find me a primary care doctor within 5 miles who accepts Blue Cross, is taking new patients, and offers evening appointments.”
• “What hospitals have a Level III NICU and allow parents to stay overnight?”
• “How much does an endoscopy cost near me, and which options are in-network?”
• “Which orthopedic surgeons near me specialize in ACL reconstruction for athletes, and what is their success rate?”

What healthcare marketers can do: Start by identifying how your organization and providers appear in AI-generated answers.

Try searching for core conditions, services, and local queries you’d expect to show up for (e.g. “dermatologist in Chandler, Arizona” or “Same-day virtual care in Charlotte”).

Run a Yext Scout scan to see how your healthcare organization shows up in AI and traditional search.

Six patient search archetypes and how they shape discovery

Here’s how your patients search — and how to show up for each mindset:

1. The Explorer:

• Traits: Seeks deep understanding
• Queries: “Has specialists who are published in medical journals” when evaluating treatment outcomes or “Offers support for clinical trials” when researching oncology care
• Needs: Long-form, medically reviewed resources

2. The Price Shopper:

• Traits: Compares costs and coverage
• Queries:“Dentists that take payment plans” or “PT offices that offer cash pay discounts”
• Needs: Transparent, easy-to-read pricing and insurance details

3. The Social Proof Seeker:

• Traits: Trusts patient experiences and ratings
• Queries: “Reviews on Dr. John Jacobson at Delta Health” or “Support group for women with infertility challenges in NYC.”
• Needs: Testimonials, authentic stories, reviews, and detailed information about what kind of support is available

4. The Creator:

• Traits: Wants personalized information and custom solutions
• Queries: “Create a 7-day diabetic meal plan” or “Design an exercise plan to grow glutes after knee surgery”
• Needs: Tools, quizzes, calculators, and personalized content

5. The Traditionalist:

• Traits: Still turns to traditional search engines for clear answers.
• Queries:“Can adults catch RSV?” or “Symptoms of a heart attack”
• Needs: Precise, clear, authoritative content that provides answers to common patient questions

6. The Accidental Searcher:

• Traits: Stumbles into health content incidentally – through browsing social feeds, finds information, then clicks to go deeper
• Example: A skincare tip on Instagram may prompt “What’s the best day cream for my routine?” on ChatGPT, which leads down a rabbit hole to Google to find local dermatology offices
• Needs: Engaging, practical content that links back to care options

What healthcare marketers can do: Develop a content strategy to align with patients’ discovery habits.

• Explorers need resource libraries
• Social Proof Seekers need video testimonials
• Creators need interactive tools
• Traditionalists need plain-language guides
• Accidental Searchers need snackable content with clear CTAs

Trust in AI is growing — but accuracy is fragile

Patients are using AI more, but many still hesitate to fully trust it.

Top frustrations include:

• Missing nuance: It’s hard for AI to answer a question like, “Is there a way to treat severe back pain at home?” without knowing the patient’s full medical history, with the exception of anything you’ve previously shared.
• Lack of source transparency: Citations are buried on many AI platforms, meaning users have to trust that AI is referencing the best sources to provide answers to important health questions like, “Do these medications have any negative interactions?”
• Local inaccuracy: Searching AI platforms for nearby facilities, like “orthopedic surgeons near me” can sometimes return irrelevant or incomplete results.

For healthcare, not showing up in AI answers (or showing up incorrectly) doesn’t just cost clicks – it damages patient trust.

What healthcare marketers can do:

• Regularly publish and update structured data on conditions, treatments, provider bios, and accepted insurances, so AI has the most credible source to pull from.
• Make sure your content and data are written for both humans and machines (AI)
• Get backlinks from authoritative websites, popular local ‘best of’ lists, and local directories.

Local precision helps providers win patients

Sixty-eight percent of people have used AI to research local services, but only 19% trust its accuracy for local results – compared to 45% for traditional search.

Think of queries like:

• “What urgent care clinics are close to 85296?”
• “Find me reviews on Kaiser Health doctors who specialize in post-op cardiac care.”
• “Dentists in Omaha, Nebraska that take payment plans.”

For multi-location health systems, urgent care, and specialist practices, this is a competitive opening. If your location data is correct down to specialties, wait times, and accessibility features, you can win where AI is weakest.

What healthcare marketers can do:

• Keep service-level info and specialties up to date
• Add accessibility features, scheduling options, and location-specific content
• Use Scout to identify and fix local visibility gap across both traditional and AI search.

Setting up for success in the new patient journey

AI isn’t replacing traditional search – it’s expanding the path to care.

Patients may never visit your website. Instead, they’re forming opinions about your care quality, availability, and credibility based on what AI tools, review sites, and social feeds surface about your brand.

To win in this world, healthcare organizations must:

• Map content to each patient search archetype
• Maintain accurate, consistent information across every discovery channel
• Prioritize structured, AI-friendly data – especially local and service-level details
• Treat AI visibility as a core acquisition strategy

In this new era of patient discovery, the question isn’t just whether you appear in AI-driven results – it’s whether you appear as the most relevant, credible, and trusted choice.

Ready to modernize your healthcare marketing? Learn more about building a high-impact, AI search optimized content strategy.

*Survey details: The results in this report are from an online survey of 2,237 adults who made a purchase online within the past three months and used voice search (e.g., Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa) or conversational AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) to find information online. The survey was conducted from March 20 to April 6, 2025, by Researchscape International on behalf of Yext. Results were weighted by country population, age, and gender. Respondents were from four countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. 396 respondents were from the U.K.