Case Study
From Silicon Valley Surgeon to Top ChatGPT Recommendation
Korman Plastic Surgery & Wunderbar MedSpa is a premier aesthetic practice led by Dr. Joshua Korman, a Stanford-trained, board-certified plastic surgeon with over 20 years of experience.
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ChatGPT ranking for “best plastic surgeon in Mountain View, CA”
GAIN
Increase in AI-driven traffic
Time to ranking
Time to being considered a top recommendation in AI answers
Result headline
Korman Plastic Surgery became a top recommendation inside LLMs.
Patients are asking LLMs for the best medical providers in their area
AI-powered search quickly became a blind spot.
Despite Dr. Korman's stellar reputation and extensive online presence, the practice faced an emerging blind spot: AI-powered search. When prospective patients asked ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity "Who's the best plastic surgeon in Mountain View?" Dr. Korman wasn't being cited. Competitors with fewer credentials and lower patient satisfaction scores were appearing instead. The practice recognized a significant shift in how patients research healthcare providers. With over 40% of Gen X and Millennial consumers now using AI assistants for local recommendations, the traditional SEO playbook was no longer sufficient. The website, while comprehensive and visually appealing, wasn't structured for LLM retrieval.
We deployed a comprehensive AI search optimization strategy
We set out to make Korman Plastic Surgery the definitive answer for plastic surgery queries in the Bay Area.
Entity Establishment: We restructured the website's content architecture to lead with clear, factual entity definitions. Dr. Korman's biography was transformed from promotional narrative to "liftable" content blocks. Statements like "Dr. Joshua Korman is a Stanford-trained, board-certified plastic surgeon" and "Adjunct Clinical Professor of Surgery at Stanford University" were positioned prominently for AI extraction.
Trust Signal Amplification: We implemented structured data markup that explicitly connected Dr. Korman to his verifiable credentials and strategic knowledge graphs: wikidata, Stanford, and hospital affiliations. These trust signals were presented in both human-readable content and JSON-LD schema for maximum retrieval coverage.
Answer-First Content Architecture: Every service page was optimized to directly answer the queries patients actually ask AI assistants: "Who is the best facelift surgeon in Silicon Valley?", and "Who does gynecomastia surgery in San Jose?" Location pages were enhanced with explicit geographic and credential statements.
Knowledge Graph Reinforcement: We strengthened the entity relationships between every surgical procedure Dr. Korman performs and it’s respective wikidata or wikipedia citation. For AI crawlers, these entity links provided critical disambiguation.
“We’ve built our reputation through exceptional patient care and clinical innovation. Marshal ensures that when patients look for the best, they find us.”
Outperformance in AI Search
Korman Plastic Surgery achieved measurable dominance in AI-powered search
ChatGPT Ranking: #1 for "best plastic surgeon in Mountain View, CA"
AI Traffic Growth: 340% increase over 5 months
Citation Quality: AI responses now cite Stanford affiliation and patent innovations
Multi-Platform Visibility: Consistent citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude
"The shift to AI-powered search is a significant change in how patients find and select independent practices. Marshal positioned us at the forefront."
A top ChatGPT recommendation
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