The Quarterly AI-Search Audit for a Practice: One Hour, Six Checks

What does a quarterly audit catch that the monthly check misses?

The monthly check reads one number and the weekly draft changes one page, and neither re-reads every source the practice is described from. The quarterly audit does, before an assistant repeats a stale fact for another quarter. It puts the identity fields, the listings, the published links, the two engine reports and three months of mention rates in front of one person for one hour, and it corrects each stale fact where it lives.

A quarter is the length the reports themselves are cut to. Bing's AI Performance report offers a three-month range alongside its shorter ones 1Ref 1Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools (2026).AI Performance - Bing Webmaster Tools.What Bing's AI Performance report measures (total citations, cited pages, grounding queries), its three-month range, and that citation-trend changes cannot be attributed to a single content change.. Google's generative AI report in Search Console breaks a site's impressions down by page and by date, from hourly to monthly, and by August 31, 2026 it was on for every site 2Ref 2Hillel Maoz and Moshe Samet, Google Search Console (2026).Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console.That Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date, was on for all sites by August 31, 2026, and stays inside the overall Performance report.. Three months also gives the monthly prompt panel three readings, the smallest number that shows a direction.

The six checks, with their minutes, are the whole audit. Run them in this order; the first supplies the facts the other five are checked against.

Check one: the identity fields against the NPPES record

Open the NPI Registry and the practice page side by side and compare five fields: the name as the registry spells it, the practice address, the practice phone, the primary taxonomy, and the credential string. A disagreement on any one is the kind that makes an assistant hedge or name a different practice. Fix it at NPPES first; the registry is the record every other source is checked against.

The registry's own clock is shorter than a quarter. A covered provider is required to report a change of address or taxonomy to NPPES within 30 days of the change, through the NPPES portal or on paper form CMS-10114 3Ref 3Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Unique Identifiers FAQs.That a covered provider must report address and taxonomy changes to NPPES within 30 days, online or on form CMS-10114.. The quarterly comparison is a backstop for that duty rather than the schedule for it.

Write the five fields down in the form the registry uses, suite number and credential abbreviation included. That sheet is the reference for the next four checks: every listing and directory in the five sources is read against it.

Check two: the listings and the directories, in the order patients use them

Re-read the Google Business Profile, the Bing Places listing, the two directories that sent the most inquiries this quarter, and the CAQH profile the payer directories draw from. Read each from the top as a patient would, and note every field that disagrees with the sheet from check one. Correct in the listing itself; a correction made on the practice site does not reach a listing on its own.

Google's own field rules set what to read on the Business Profile. The name must match the practice's real-world signage and branding, and the description is capped at 750 characters and may carry no URLs 4Ref 4Google (2026).Edit your Business Profile.The Business Profile field limits the audit reads against: name matching signage, one primary plus up to nine categories, up to three phone numbers, a 750-character description with no URLs.. A profile holds one primary category and up to nine additional ones 4Ref 4Google (2026).Edit your Business Profile.The Business Profile field limits the audit reads against: name matching signage, one primary plus up to nine categories, up to three phone numbers, a 750-character description with no URLs.. It also holds up to three phone numbers 4Ref 4Google (2026).Edit your Business Profile.The Business Profile field limits the audit reads against: name matching signage, one primary plus up to nine categories, up to three phone numbers, a 750-character description with no URLs.. Read the hours against the front desk's calendar; hours drift most between quarters.

The Bing Places listing gets the same read, and so do the two directories, chosen by the inquiry log rather than by habit. When the directory lists you wrong, the fix goes through that directory's own edit flow, and the audit note records the date it was submitted so a change that never lands is noticed next quarter.

The payer side is the slowest to correct and the easiest to forget. Payer directories carry their own directory duties, and the quarter is the moment to answer any verification request sitting unread in the inbox. CAQH re-attestation runs on the 120-day attestation clock; if it falls inside the quarter, attest before the quarter closes.

Check three: the broken links and the drifting dates

Click every action the practice publishes: the booking link on the Business Profile, the new-patient form, the insurance page, the telehealth link. Each must load, without a login wall or a CAPTCHA, on the page where the patient completes the action. Then read the dates. A page whose visible date moved while its text did not is a stale fact wearing a fresh label, and an engine is built to notice.

Google checks Business Profile action links as often as daily. Its rules require the link to lead to a dedicated landing page for the business, return a 200-class status, and be crawlable by Google's automated checks without CAPTCHAs, rate limits, IP blocking or cloaking 5Ref 5Google (2026).Business links policies & guidelines.That Google checks Business Profile action links as often as daily and requires a dedicated landing page returning a 200-class status, crawlable without CAPTCHAs, rate limits, IP blocking or cloaking.. A booking vendor that changes its URL breaks that rule the day it changes, and the practice hears nothing.

Dates get the same scrutiny. Google treats a byline date as its own estimate of when a page was published or significantly updated, formed from several signals, and it asks that the visible date and the structured dateModified match and describe the page itself, never a future date or an event the page mentions 6Ref 6Google Search Central (2025).Influence your byline dates in Google Search.That a byline date is Google's estimate of a significant update formed from several signals, and that visible and structured dates must match and describe the page, never a future or event date.. So the audit reads the site's dates against the practice's own change log. A dateModified bumped by a template rebuild, with no change in the text, is the mismatch to look for.

Checks four and five: export the quarter from both engine reports

Export three months from Search Console and three from Bing Webmaster Tools, and file both with the audit. Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions of the practice's pages inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page and by date. Bing's AI Performance report shows total citations, cited pages and grounding queries across Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. Neither report shows a ranking, and neither one explains a change.

Google's report is broken down by page, country, device and date, and the same data stays inside the overall Performance report 2Ref 2Hillel Maoz and Moshe Samet, Google Search Console (2026).Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console.That Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date, was on for all sites by August 31, 2026, and stays inside the overall Performance report.. The figure it reports is impressions, counted per page 2Ref 2Hillel Maoz and Moshe Samet, Google Search Console (2026).Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console.That Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date, was on for all sites by August 31, 2026, and stays inside the overall Performance report.. For the audit, the Search Console reading is the export and the list of pages that appear.

A Bing citation is a time the practice's content was visibly shown as a source in an AI answer, and a grounding query is a grouped phrase the AI used when retrieving that content, not the patient's full prompt 1Ref 1Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools (2026).AI Performance - Bing Webmaster Tools.What Bing's AI Performance report measures (total citations, cited pages, grounding queries), its three-month range, and that citation-trend changes cannot be attributed to a single content change.. The report does not measure rankings, authority or importance, and Bing says a change in the citation trend cannot be attributed to any single content change or model update 1Ref 1Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools (2026).AI Performance - Bing Webmaster Tools.What Bing's AI Performance report measures (total citations, cited pages, grounding queries), its three-month range, and that citation-trend changes cannot be attributed to a single content change.. Record the count and the cited pages; resist writing a cause beside them.

Referral clicks from assistants live in the site's analytics; the AI referral tally is a separate check. The two exports, the indexed-page count from each tool, and the referral tally are the quarter's measurement; three quarters of them side by side is when the numbers begin to say something.

Check six: the three monthly panel rates, and what to change next quarter

Lay the three monthly prompt panel rates side by side and read the direction before the level. A rate from a few dozen prompts moves for reasons nobody at the practice caused, so one month up or down says little, and three months in one direction on one fact says more. Pick the two facts that assistants got wrong or left out most often, and make those two the next quarter's work.

Name them in the audit note with the rate that prompted each, so next quarter's audit can say whether the work moved anything.

But a correction is only half a correction until the engines are told. Bing's guidance on IndexNow is that newly published pages, materially updated pages and deleted pages warrant a notification, because crawlers run on their own schedule and an unnotified change may be found late 7Ref 7Fabrice Canel, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft Bing (2024).IndexNow: When and How Websites Should Notify Search Engines.Which changes warrant an IndexNow notification (new, materially updated and deleted pages), that reviews are notified incrementally in batches, and why an unnotified change may be found late.. A changed hours block or a removed location counts. Reviews are announced too, but in batches rather than one at a time; Bing's own example notifies each of the first 20 reviews and then every fifth 7Ref 7Fabrice Canel, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft Bing (2024).IndexNow: When and How Websites Should Notify Search Engines.Which changes warrant an IndexNow notification (new, materially updated and deleted pages), that reviews are notified incrementally in batches, and why an unnotified change may be found late.. Gale announces a provider's gale.care page to Bing through IndexNow the day it changes. The practice's own site needs the same from whoever maintains it.

Then leave the changes alone. The next monthly panel is the first place a correction can show, and the quarter after this one is the first place the exports can. The hour ends with three things on paper: the fields corrected, the two dated exports, and the two facts for next quarter. Next quarter's audit begins by reading this one.