15 questions people in pain ask AI before booking a physio, and what answers them
Someone with a slipped disc asks an AI assistant 'best physiotherapist near me' before they ever open a clinic's website, so I scanned 15 real physio sites to see how many are built to answer that.
Someone in pain does not start on a clinic's website anymore. They ask an AI assistant 'physiotherapist near me' or 'physio for slipped disc' or 'do physios do home visits,' and the assistant answers from whatever it can read, not from whichever clinic has the nicest homepage.
I scanned 15 Indian physiotherapy and rehab clinic websites the same way I scan every vertical: for whether the page is structured so an AI engine can actually read and cite it. The median score was 87 out of 100, one of the stronger verticals I have scanned, though not the very top (IVF sits at 90, dermatology and hair transplant at 89).
The good news mostly stops at structured data. Twelve of 15 sites carry some schema markup. Only 3 of 15 carry FAQPage schema, the exact format that lets an AI engine lift a direct answer to a direct question. That gap is where most of the 15 questions below get lost.
The 15 questions, and the fix for each
LocalBusiness or Physiotherapy schema with a correct name, address, geo coordinates and areaServed lets an AI engine confirm the clinic exists and where. Twelve of 15 sites in my scan already carry some form of this structured data.
If your address only lives inside a footer image, an AI engine cannot confirm you are near the patient.
A Service or Offer entry with an explicit price field, or at minimum a plain text price list, not a number buried inside a PDF or an image.
A price an AI engine can read is a price an AI engine will quote.
FAQPage schema answering 'do you offer home visits' directly. Only 3 of 15 sites in my scan have any FAQ schema at all, so this is exactly the kind of yes or no question most physio sites leave to guesswork.
If home visits are not written as a question and answer, most sites are silently leaving that answer unwritten.
A dedicated condition page as real text, not an image, with one clear H1 stating the condition treated. Six of 15 sites in my scan fail even a single clean H1.
A page titled 'Services' is invisible to this query; a page titled 'Physiotherapy for Slipped Disc' is citable.
A Service entry naming 'frozen shoulder' or 'adhesive capsulitis' directly, rather than folding it into a general 'shoulder pain' or 'orthopedic physiotherapy' line.
AI engines match on the condition name a patient actually types, not on a broad category.
A Service entry that lists post knee replacement rehabilitation as its own named service, with a short plain text explanation of the protocol.
Bundling every joint into one 'orthopedic physiotherapy' line hides the specific answer an AI engine needs.
Physiotherapy or MedicalBusiness schema with medicalSpecialty set, paired with a dedicated sports rehab page written in text.
A specialty field in schema does the sorting a whole page used to be needed for.
An FAQ entry stating the booking requirement in plain terms. This is the kind of operational question the 12 of 15 sites without FAQ schema leave unanswered to AI.
A booking rule that only lives in a phone call is a rule an AI engine cannot repeat.
An FAQ entry giving a realistic session range per condition, written in real text instead of a vague 'it depends, come in for a consult' line.
A range an AI engine can quote beats a promise that requires a phone call to unpack.
A condition page with sciatica named directly in the H1. Nine of 15 sites in my scan pass this basic test and 6 do not.
If sciatica never appears in a heading, an AI engine has nothing on the page to match the query against.
A named Service entry for neuro rehabilitation or post stroke physiotherapy, kept separate from general orthopedic listings.
Neuro rehab folded inside a general services list reads to an AI engine as if it does not exist.
OpeningHoursSpecification inside the business schema, plus a working booking link rather than a 'call to book' line.
Hours written only inside a banner image are hours no AI engine can read.
A condition page naming cervical pain or neck pain directly in plain text, paired with the site's existing structured data since 12 of 15 sites in my scan already have some schema in place.
The structured data most sites already have only helps if the condition is also named somewhere on the page.
A Service or itemList entry naming each modality, dry needling, manual therapy, electrotherapy, individually, instead of one line about 'modern equipment.'
AI engines cite techniques by name, so techniques need to be named on the page.
A dedicated ACL recovery or post surgical rehab page with real text and FAQPage schema covering timeline and cost, the combination only 3 of 15 sites in my scan currently have.
ACL recovery deserves its own page, not a bullet point under 'sports injuries.'
What I found scanning 15 physiotherapy and rehab sites
Grades split 8 A, 4 B, 2 C, 1 D and zero F. More than half the sites scored an A, and scores still ranged widely, from 49 to 100. A patient asking AI about two physio clinics in the same city can get a confident, cited answer about one and nothing about the other.
Structured data is the biggest single lever. Twelve of 15 sites have some form of JSON-LD schema, and their median score is 89. The 3 sites without any structured data have a median of 50, a gap of 39 points. Open Graph tags appear on 11 of 15 sites and a clear page title on 13 of 15, so the basics that control how a link looks when shared are in reasonable shape. Nine of 15 sites pass a simpler test, one clear H1 heading; 6 do not, and that matters because an AI engine often leans on that heading to confirm what the page is actually about.
One thing stood out. Standalone local clinics scored almost as well as multi-city chains, 84 versus 86.5. When I scanned diagnostic labs and vet hospitals earlier, the small independent players scored far worse than the chains. In physiotherapy the field is close, which means a single clinic in a smaller city is not automatically disadvantaged against a big chain, at least on this measure.
The pattern under all 15
The pattern across all 15 sites is not that clinics hide information. Session prices, conditions treated and home visit availability are usually written somewhere on the page, in a paragraph a human can read. What is missing is the version an AI engine can lift without guessing: FAQPage schema that pairs the exact question a patient types with a direct answer, and condition specific pages, in plain text, instead of one generic Services list.
The fix for most of these 15 sites is not a redesign. It is adding FAQPage schema around the questions patients already ask at the front desk, a page for slipped disc, a page for frozen shoulder, a page for post knee replacement rehab, each with a clear H1 and a real price where one exists. Twelve of 15 sites already have some structured data in place. The next step is making sure it answers a specific question, not just confirms the clinic exists. You can grade your own physio site free to see where it stands.
Frequently asked questions
Why don't physiotherapy clinics show up in ChatGPT or AI Overviews answers?
Usually the information exists on the page but is not structured for an AI engine to read. In my scan of 15 physio clinics, only 3 had FAQPage schema, so the plain text answers on the page are there for humans but harder for an AI engine to lift directly.
Does adding schema markup actually help a physiotherapy clinic get cited by AI?
In this scan it was the clearest single factor. The 12 of 15 sites with some structured data had a median score of 89; the 3 without it had a median of 50, a gap of 39 points.
What is the single most common gap on physiotherapy websites right now?
FAQPage schema. Only 3 of the 15 clinics I scanned use it, even though most of them already answer common patient questions somewhere on the page in plain text.
Do patients really ask AI assistants before choosing a physiotherapist?
I cannot measure what a specific patient typed, but the questions in this post, physio for sciatica, session cost, home visits, are the same ones clinics get asked at the front desk every day, and those are exactly the kind of queries people now put to an AI assistant first.