Top healthcare trends of 2026: AI reshapes online search behavior and marketing strategies

AI is reshaping healthcare online search, marketing, and patient engagement. Here’s how healthcare marketers should adapt their content and SEO strategies to changing consumer behaviors in 2026.

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For more than 20 years, internet users relied on a relatively static process for acquiring information: Type a string of keywords into a search engine (such as “best Cleveland cardiologists”), then click through the sites listed in the top results until you find what you’re looking for.

Today, users can ask increasingly complex questions of Google, Bing, and other search engines in plain language and receive conversational responses—of varying quality—synthesized from multiple digital sources using generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Google’s AI Overviews, Microsoft’s Copilot, and conversational search engines like Perplexity and You.com are changing how consumers search for everything, from recipes to healthcare information. As consumer behavior changes in light of this evolving landscape, healthcare marketing teams will need to change as well to effectively reach and engage their target audiences.

In 2026, we expect successful healthcare marketing teams to employ new content, digital, and SEO strategies to meet the shifting demands of an increasingly online, AI-friendly consumer base. Before we explore those strategies, let’s take a look at the online search landscape today, and where it’s headed next.

Despite accuracy concerns, consumer AI is booming

In May 2024, U.S. Google users began to see something new at the top of their search results: an AI-generated, plain-language summary of information related to their query, complete with links to the sources it drew from.

Initially presented as the Search Generative Experience at the Google I/O conference a year prior, Google’s new AI Overviews (AIO) feature was among the first generative AI tools to be incorporated into a major search engine.

First impressions were mixed. The conversational, chatbot-generated responses could be apparently accurate and comprehensive, delivering faster answers to common questions than a traditional search process. But AI Overviews and similar tools—like Gemini, Copilot, and ChatGPT-4—were also clearly prone to meme-worthy hallucinations and outright dangerous misinformation.

In the ensuing year-and-change, AI Overviews and its peers should have grown more accurate with training, but it’s unclear to what degree. At the very least, these services have been known to speculate and fabricate citations when posed with a question they can’t answer, including those about their own accuracy.

For its part, Google’s AI seems to actually overstate its shortcomings. While a Mashable writer found that the service hallucinates roughly 1 in 5 searches, AI Overviews once estimated its own failure rate to be 60%.

Despite the varying accuracy rates demonstrated by leading language models, AI search services are popular among consumers across demographics. A report from Menlo Ventures found that 61% of American adults used AI in the first half of 2025, with nearly one in five using it daily.

Millennials are AI’s current power users, with 24% saying they use it daily. Gen Z and Gen X fall just behind at 21% and 19% respectively, while just over 1 in 10 baby boomers report daily use.

The Menlo Ventures report also found that employed adults (75%) and students (85%) are more likely to use these services than unemployed adults (52%).

AI tools are becoming the norm among consumers searching for products and services, too. Around 58% of consumers are using gen AI for product/service recommendations in 2025, up from 25% in 2023, according to a consumer trends report from Capgemini Research Institute.  And more than 70% say they want AI integrated into their purchasing experience.

A report from the Pew Research Center found that Google users click fewer links when shown an AI Overview at the top of their search results. As more consumers turn to AI to guide their decision-making, it’s imperative that healthcare marketers take heed and accommodate this emerging digital trend.

How to optimize your healthcare SEO strategy in the age of AI

Digital marketers are used to taking a reactive approach to strategy. Shifting algorithms, search behaviors, and browser capabilities have kept marketing teams on their toes, making regular adjustments to strategies to cater to the fickle whims of Google (and, to a lesser degree, Bing).

In that way, the rise of gen AI search results presents a new—but not entirely unfamiliar—challenge to healthcare marketers: Tailoring content to boost its prioritization by the LLMs upon which gen AI tools are trained.

This doesn’t mean neglecting traditional SEO practices targeting search engine crawlers, but rather augmenting those practices to reach both human and AI audiences as well. Consider these tips:

1. Optimize content for AI-driven search

Most consumer-facing AI systems are trained on publicly available, high-authority content. They rely on logically structured, semantically clear, and conversationally presented information to generate responses.

To gain priority with these systems, healthcare marketers should create accessible, indexable online content that’s easy for AI to read, complete with schema markup, clear headings and metadata, and consistent formatting. As often as possible, it should be ungated and rendered with limited JavaScript.

Consumers engage with AI systems in a conversational manner, so your content should be written with this in mind. Incorporate plain-language questions and answers into your resources (such as with FAQs or query-oriented headings), and include plenty of links to emphasize expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

Topical authority matters to human readers and AI trainers, so include author profiles with listed credentials, links to published content, and featured citations.

You should regularly test AI tools with questions related to your business, services, or products, and assess their responses to further inform the formatting and subject matter of your content.

2. Feed the models that feed the chatbots

The LLMs that feed AI systems often scrape publicly available information from major healthcare publishers and data providers. In some cases, they may license that information in partnership with the healthcare organization.

Partnering with organizations that are already training LLMs can get your information where it needs to be for chatbots and AI search tools to reference it. Consider how your organization could provide informative content and other resources—like blogs, data analyses, or thought leadership content—to current LLM partners to improve your brand visibility.

Sharing unique data and insights in places frequented by consumers and LLMs alike can help to establish your brand as an authority and ensure your content feeds the right models:

• Wikipedia
• Newswires
• Peer-reviewed journals
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• Substack

3. Write for an AI-informed audience

Even if your content isn’t being cited by AI, assume visitors to your site have at least skimmed the AI-generated summary for their query and are coming to you for deeper insights.

As you build landing pages and consumer-facing materials geared toward specific keywords and queries, include more in-depth questions and answers (in a simple, direct, and conversational tone) to provide value beyond the top-level summary offered by AI.

The rise of AI-generated content could ultimately make validation from real humans even more important. Create content that positions your providers, MSLs, and other experts as trusted voices that offer a level of empathy and lived experience that AI can’t match.

Be sure to highlight case studies, customer/partner logos, research citations, and brand mentions to build positive sentiment around your brand. In an AI-driven digital environment, it’s increasingly important to highlight the human element in your work, and the impact it has on real people.

4. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

If your organization has the resources and expertise to do so, developing your own branded AI assistant can help consumers transition from a third-party AI tool or traditional search engine to take the next step in their journey with your business, whether that’s scheduling an appointment, accessing reference materials, or comparing products and services.

Of course, your in-house AI should be HIPAA-compliant, well-trained, and clear about the difference between educational information and medical advice.

Learn more

Despite shortcomings in accuracy, AI-assisted search and LLMs are likely to dominate digital spaces for years to come. In 2026 and beyond, it’s safe to assume that a considerable portion—if not the majority—of your target audience will use AI to engage with your corner of the healthcare industry, from choosing their physician, to learning about new medications and treatment options, to exploring the activities of key opinion leaders.

Definitive Healthcare’s comprehensive intelligence delivers deep insights into markets, care networks, and consumer trends. To see how our solutions can help your organization find clarity, acquire and retain more patients with precision marketing, expedite growth, and improve patient outcomes, sign up for a demo today.