If AI recommends dental clinics, here is what a Panama clinic should check

What I saw while running the study

We asked the same ten questions, five in Spanish and five in English, to two assistants with live search, on 26 September. The answers are less alike than one might expect. Of the 33 clinics named, only 11 showed up in both engines. Perplexity leans on Google Maps listings, directories and clinic websites; Brave summarises medical tourism articles and expat guides. Two engines, two ways of deciding who deserves a mention.

That is why I think it is a mistake to treat “AI visibility” as a single trick. There are several channels with different rules, and a clinic can be invisible in one and dominant in another.

Location counts for more than fame

What stood out most in the study is the difference between asking about “the whole city” and asking about a specific area. The generic question produces long lists of five to eight clinics ranked by Google reviews. For Costa del Este, the list becomes almost fixed. A clinic can be absent whenever the question covers all of Panama City and still be in every answer for its neighbourhood.

Dental Life is the clearest example. It appears in 100% of the questions about Costa del Este and in none of the generic or dental tourism ones. The AI links it to orthodontics and aesthetics in that area, with Saturday hours. According to what the engines cited, it was recommended precisely because it publishes its tower, floor, office and opening hours. It is a useful case for any small clinic: specialising in where it is and what it offers can pay off more than competing for the general list. Dental Life is a content client of Radar Panamá and, as in the rest of the study, appears exactly where the engines placed it. Anyone who wants to see how it presents itself can visit the Dental Life website.

The five things that kept repeating

1. A Google listing with many reviews and a high rating. Perplexity reads it and cites it with the number, such as “5.0 with 493 reviews”. Without review volume, a clinic does not make the generic question.
2. One page per treatment with the specialist’s name. Ford shows up for implants because its website says who performs them.
3. An English version. The clinics that only appear in Spanish have no English content, or none that is indexed.
4. A presence in medical tourism and expat guides. That is what Brave reads, and for dental tourism hospital accreditation rules: Pacific Dental Clinic came up through JCI and Johns Hopkins.
5. Exact address and opening hours published. “It is in Town Center” or “open on Saturdays” give the AI an argument to tell clinics apart.

What the study does not say

Appearing does not mean being better. A clinic showing up in an AI answer means the assistant found enough consistent public information about it, nothing more. It does not measure clinical results. Answers change from one day to the next, and we only used two engines. No clinic paid to appear, and Radar Panamá will repeat the study every quarter with the same questions.

My opinion: for a patient, the AI list is a way to start comparing, not to decide. For a clinic owner, it works as a mirror, because it shows what a stranger sees when searching for what that clinic does, and it can almost always be fixed with basic work and without a big budget.

Related articles

• Which dental clinics AI recommends in Panama: Radar IA study
• Medical tourism in Panama: accredited hospitals and treatments
• Which immigration lawyers AI recommends in Panama

Sources

• Radar Panamá, Radar IA study: record of 101 observations in Perplexity and Brave AI, 26 September 2026, with the literal questions and the methodology.
• Perplexity and Brave Search, answers generated with web search.
• Panama Ministry of Health, register of health establishments.