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Iris is a managed AI visibility service for independent clinics in India. It builds the digital infrastructure that makes your clinic findable on Google, Google Maps, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and voice assistants — and manages that infrastructure on an ongoing basis. The goal is to reduce your dependence on platforms like Practo and bring patients directly to your own website.

Iris works with independent clinics across five categories: Aesthetics and Skin (skin clinics, laser centres, cosmetic surgery, hair transplant), Dental (general, cosmetic, implants, orthodontics), Eye Care (LASIK, ophthalmology, cataract), Wellness and Rehabilitation (Ayurveda, Panchakarma, physiotherapy, mental health), and Fertility and Metabolic Health (IVF, weight management, hormonal health). If you run an owner-operated clinic, Iris is likely a fit.

Iris does not replace your clinic management software, EMR, or appointment scheduling platform. It is not a medical billing solution, a telemedicine tool, or a Practo/Justdial listing service. Iris focuses exclusively on how patients discover your clinic online — through search, AI, and voice — and on converting that discovery into bookings through your own domain.

Most digital marketing agencies for clinics focus on Instagram content, Google Ads, and traditional SEO. Iris builds a different, newer layer of infrastructure: schema markup that AI systems read, llms.txt files that guide AI crawlers, Google Business Profile posts that generate direct enquiries, and AI-readable content that gets cited by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. The typical marketing agency does not offer this because it is a new discipline — GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation — that requires different technical skills. Iris and a marketing agency are complementary, not competing.

The patients you already have found you through whatever channel was dominant when they first searched. New patients use whatever channel is dominant now — and that is increasingly AI search. rater8's 2026 data shows 36% of patients now say AI influenced their provider choice, overtaking GP referrals (32%) for the first time. Clinics that build AI visibility now will be the default recommendation when new patients in your specialty and city search for a provider.

AI visibility means your clinic appears when patients search on AI platforms — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity — not just on traditional Google search. When a patient in Bengaluru asks ChatGPT 'best skin clinic near me for acne,' AI visibility determines whether your clinic gets named in the response. AI search and traditional Google search use different signals to decide who gets recommended. Being visible on one does not guarantee visibility on the other.

Both things can be true simultaneously: your SEO is excellent and your AI visibility is near zero. Traditional SEO is optimised for Google's ranking algorithm — keyword relevance, backlinks, page speed, Core Web Vitals. AI search citation depends on a different infrastructure stack: schema markup identifying your practice as a specific medical entity, llms.txt files guiding AI crawlers, robots.txt permissions for AI-specific bots (ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot), and content written for extraction rather than keyword ranking. Most SEO agencies have not built this because it did not exist before 2024. The SEO work has value and should continue. The AI layer needs to be added on top.

An agentic readiness score is a composite measure out of 100 of how well a clinic's digital infrastructure enables AI platforms to find, verify, and recommend the practice. Iris calculates it across six dimensions: Google Business Profile completeness, on-page content AI readability, schema markup coverage, citation consistency (NAP), root-level AI files (llms.txt, ai-index.json), and active AI surfacing across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI. The average across 1,000+ independent clinics audited by Iris is 47 out of 100.

A score of 70 or above puts your clinic in a meaningfully better position than most competitors. A score above 80 indicates strong AI visibility infrastructure. The national average is 47, meaning most clinics are operating at roughly half their potential. After a 60-day Iris engagement, most clinics reach 70 or above. The score is not a ceiling — it continues to improve as AI platforms index and validate your content over time.

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation — structuring your digital presence so that AI systems (generative engines) can find, understand, and cite your clinic. SEO optimises for where you rank in a list of links. GEO optimises for whether you get named in an AI-generated recommendation. The technical deliverables are different: SEO focuses on keywords, backlinks, and page authority. GEO focuses on schema markup, llms.txt, AI-readable content structure, and entity consistency. Both matter in 2026. SEO covers traditional Google search. GEO covers AI search.

llms.txt is a plain-text file placed at your website's root directory (yourdomain.com/llms.txt) that provides AI crawlers with a prioritised, curated map of your most important content. It is to AI systems what a sitemap.xml is to Google — a guide to what matters on your site. Without it, AI crawlers must independently discover and evaluate every page, which produces unreliable and incomplete indexing. A well-structured llms.txt helps ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude go directly to your procedure pages, FAQ content, and location information. Iris deploys llms.txt as a standard deliverable in every engagement.

AI search is not replacing Google — it is changing how Google works. Google I/O 2026 merged AI Overviews and AI Mode into a single unified search experience. Most health-related Google searches now produce an AI-generated summary before any organic links appear. AI search is not a separate destination most patients go to instead of Google — it is increasingly how Google itself works. Clinics need to be visible in both the traditional Google results and in the AI-generated summaries that now appear above those results.

Schema markup is structured data added to your website's code that tells search engines and AI systems exactly what your clinic is, what it treats, where it is located, and how to book. Humans read your page; AI systems read the schema. Without MedicalBusiness and MedicalProcedure schema, an AI platform has to guess whether you are a dermatology clinic, a spa, or a blog. With it, your clinic is classified correctly and becomes eligible to be cited in answers. Iris deploys schema across every page as a standard deliverable.

At minimum: MedicalBusiness (or the specific type such as Dermatology, Dentist, or Physiotherapy) to classify the practice, MedicalProcedure or Service for each treatment page, FAQPage for question-and-answer content, Speakable for voice-search eligibility, and Person for practitioner credentials. Location and opening-hours data belong in LocalBusiness properties. Iris selects and implements the correct set for your specialty rather than applying a generic template.

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are the signals Google and AI systems weigh especially heavily for health topics, which are treated as Your Money or Your Life content. For a clinic that means named practitioners with real credentials, author bylines on medical content, verifiable qualifications, consistent business information, and genuine reviews. Iris builds these signals into your site with Person schema, credential markup, and structured practitioner profiles so AI systems can verify, not just read, your authority.

AEO, or Answer Engine Optimisation, is the practice of structuring content so that AI answer engines can extract a direct, quotable answer from it. Where SEO aims to rank a page in a list of links, AEO aims to have your content lifted verbatim into an AI-generated answer. In practice it overlaps heavily with GEO: question-shaped headings, concise direct answers, FAQ structuring, and Speakable schema. Iris writes clinic content in this format so your pages are the source an answer engine quotes.

Ranking means your link appears in a position on a results page and the patient still has to click and evaluate you against everyone else. Being recommended means an AI system names your clinic directly in its answer, often the only name, or one of two or three. Recommendation is a much stronger position because the AI has already done the comparison and filtering for the patient. A clinic can rank well on Google and still never be recommended by AI, because the two depend on different infrastructure.

SEO content is often written to hit a keyword density and length target, with the real answer buried several paragraphs down. AI systems extract content that answers a question clearly and early, in a structure they can lift cleanly. Long keyword-stuffed introductions, vague headings, and answers that never state a direct fact give an AI nothing to quote. Iris rewrites clinic content in an extraction-friendly format, direct answers first, question-shaped headings, and structured data, which is what gets cited.

NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. NAP consistency means those details are identical everywhere your clinic appears online: your website, Google Business Profile, Practo, Justdial, and every directory. When they conflict, with an old address in one place and a different phone in another, search and AI systems lose confidence that these listings describe the same entity, and your clinic's visibility drops. Iris audits and corrects citation inconsistencies across directories as part of the engagement.

A page that gets pulled into AI Overviews leads with a direct answer to the query, uses a clear question-shaped heading and sub-headings, states specifics such as what the treatment is, who it is for, what it costs, and what recovery looks like, includes an FAQ block with FAQPage schema, and carries MedicalProcedure schema. Iris structures every treatment page this way so each one is individually eligible to be cited for its condition and city query.

Yes. Your GBP is the single most important digital asset a local clinic controls. It is the primary data source that Google Maps, Google AI Mode, and even ChatGPT (via Google Maps integration) use for local provider recommendations. Iris both optimises and actively manages your GBP — not as a one-time setup but as an ongoing channel with weekly posts, Q&A management, review monitoring, and photo updates.

Setup is not management. Most clinics set up their GBP once and leave it untouched for months. Iris manages your GBP as an active, posting channel: weekly posts on treatment spotlights and seasonal health topics, seeded Q&A answers that appear in search, photo updates, category audits, and review response protocols. It is the difference between a profile that says you exist and a profile that actively drives calls and walk-in enquiries.

Weekly. Seven days apart, consistently, throughout the engagement. GBP posts appear in the Maps UI and build the algorithmic signals that improve your local search ranking. Clinics that post weekly appear in local map searches significantly more often than clinics that post occasionally or not at all. The content is written and published by Iris — no work from your team is required beyond an occasional approval.

The wrong primary category. Many clinics use 'Day Spa' instead of 'Medical Spa,' 'Optometrist' instead of 'Ophthalmologist,' or a generic category like 'Health' instead of their specific specialty. The primary GBP category is one of the most significant signals in Google AI Mode's local recommendation logic. If it is wrong, your clinic is systematically excluded from high-value procedure-specific searches. Iris corrects this as the first step of every engagement.

Practo is a patient acquisition channel you rent. When you stop paying, your ranking drops immediately. Practo also captures all the search data — what patients searched, how many saw your listing, which queries drove bookings — and keeps it. You receive only an appointment notification. AI visibility, by contrast, builds on infrastructure you own. Your Google rankings, your AI Overview citations, your GBP authority — these accumulate over time and cannot be turned off by a platform pricing decision. Iris does not tell you to leave Practo. It tells you to build the infrastructure so that leaving Practo is an option.

Yes. By building your clinic's direct search visibility — organic Google rankings for procedure and location queries, Google Maps presence, AI Overview citations, and an on-domain booking page — Iris creates the conditions where patients can find you and book with you without going through Practo. Clinics that complete a full Iris engagement typically see a measurable increase in direct organic enquiries within 60 days. For a deeper breakdown, see what Practo keeps and the Practo vs Google comparison.

That decision depends on your current patient volume and risk tolerance. Iris does not advise clinics to abruptly exit Practo. What Iris builds is the infrastructure that makes exiting Practo a viable, low-risk decision rather than a terrifying one. As your direct organic and AI visibility grows, your Practo dependency naturally decreases. Most clinic owners who go through an Iris engagement find themselves negotiating Practo subscription renewals from a much stronger position.

Practo's booking widget loads inside an iframe — a sandboxed HTML container that AI crawlers and Google cannot read. The content inside (your service names, prices, procedure descriptions) is invisible to every search engine and AI platform. Iris replaces this with an on-domain booking form that is indexable, trackable, and schema-markable. Moving booking to your own domain also means you get full attribution data on where each patient came from — which Practo never provides.

Iris Core includes: weekly AI visibility audit and discoverability score, AI-readable content infrastructure (schema markup, llms.txt, robots.txt AI crawler configuration, ai-index.json), Google Business Profile management with weekly posts, schema implementation across your service pages, NAP citation consistency correction, and access to the Iris dashboard showing your AI search performance. Everything is implemented by the Iris team. You review and approve; we execute.

Iris Growth adds everything in Iris Core, plus: monthly blog and treatment page content published to your website, Google Ads and Meta Ads strategy, setup, and management, and high-intent targeting for your key procedures. Ad spend up to Rs 1 lakh per month is included in the management fee. Above that, the fee is 20% of spend up to Rs 2 lakh, and 15% of spend above Rs 2 lakh. Paid and organic performance appear in one unified dashboard.

No. There is no setup fee for either plan. Onboarding takes 7 days from the time you sign up to your first deliverables being in progress.

Iris Core is the right choice if you want to build your organic and AI search foundation first, without paid ads. It is also the right starting point if you have a limited budget. Iris Growth is the right choice if you want to run paid acquisition alongside organic — particularly if your highest-value procedures have strong Google Ads demand (LASIK, IVF, dental implants, hair transplant). If you are unsure, start with Core. You can upgrade to Growth at any time.

Plans are on a monthly basis. You can cancel or change at any time with 30 days notice. There is no lock-in period. The AI visibility infrastructure Iris builds belongs to your domain — if you cancel, the schema, llms.txt, and indexed content continue to work.

Days 1-7: Iris completes a full visibility audit across your website, GBP, directory citations, and AI platforms, and delivers your agentic readiness score with a prioritised gap list. Days 8-20: Schema implementation, robots.txt update, llms.txt file, ai-index.json deployment, GBP category correction, and initial service page rewrites. Days 21-30: First GBP posts published, NAP citation corrections submitted, Google Search Console AI Performance Report baseline established.

AI crawler visits (ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot appearing in your server logs) typically show within 2-4 weeks of robots.txt update. Google AI Overview impressions become measurable in Search Console within 4-6 weeks of schema deployment. Third-party AI citations (your clinic appearing when someone asks ChatGPT for your specialty in your city) typically develop within 6-10 weeks. Google Maps ranking improvements show within 4-8 weeks of GBP optimisation.

No. Iris handles all technical implementation. If you have an existing website, Iris needs either FTP/hosting access or the ability to add code to your page headers — something a developer or your website admin can set up once. If your website is on WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, or a similar platform, Iris can work within that environment.

No. Schema markup, llms.txt, robots.txt, and ai-index.json are invisible to human visitors. They are read only by search engines and AI crawlers. Content changes (service page rewrites, FAQ additions) will change some text on your pages, but the visual design and layout remain unchanged. GBP changes are visible on Google Maps.

Three things: access to your Google Business Profile (ownership or admin access), the ability to add code to your website headers (or FTP access if needed), and a list of your primary services and procedures. Iris does the rest.

Iris tracks four primary metrics: your agentic readiness score (0-100, measured monthly), AI crawler visits in your server access logs, AI Overview and AI Mode impressions in Google Search Console (measurable since the Generative AI Performance Report launched June 2026), and direct patient enquiries from organic and AI search tracked via UTM parameters and intake form source questions.

Based on clinic engagements completed to date: most clinics see their agentic readiness score rise from the 40-50 range to above 70. Google Maps ranking improves for primary specialty queries. AI crawler visits appear in server logs within the first month. Google AI Overview impressions begin accumulating. The Glam Korean Skin Studio case — a new clinic in Andheri West, Mumbai — achieved Google AI Overview citations within 3 days of site launch and organic rankings within the first week, with zero ad spend.

Agentic readiness score with dimension-level breakdown, AI crawler visit frequency (ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot), Google AI Overview impressions and clicks (from Search Console integration), GBP post performance, Maps ranking position for primary queries, organic search impressions and clicks, and — for Iris Growth — Google Ads and Meta Ads performance alongside organic numbers.

Iris does not audit competitor practices individually (that would require access to their server logs and Search Console data). What Iris can show is whether competitors are appearing in AI-generated responses for your specialty and city queries — which is a direct signal of their AI visibility level relative to yours.

You can run five checks in a few minutes with no technical skills: open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and yourdomain.com/llms.txt to see whether they exist, ask ChatGPT for the best clinic in your specialty and city to see whether you are named, search your main treatment on Google and look for an AI Overview, check your Google Business Profile's primary category, and confirm your name, address, and phone match across your top listings. Iris turns this into a full agentic readiness score across six dimensions, and the free audit does it for you.

Yes. The AI visibility opportunity in Tier 2 cities (Jaipur, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Surat, Chandigarh, Kochi, and others) is in many ways larger than in metros, because the competitive field is less populated. Fewer clinics in these markets have built any AI infrastructure at all. A clinic that establishes AI citation authority in a Tier 2 city now is likely to hold it for longer than a clinic that moves in a saturated metro market.

Yes. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode serve results in Hindi and regional languages for health queries. Voice search on Google Assistant and Siri is disproportionately voice-initiated in India across multiple languages. The schema markup, GBP categories, and content structure that Iris builds are language-agnostic — they signal to AI systems what your clinic does and where it is, regardless of what language a patient's query is in. Iris is exploring vernacular content as a forthcoming service offering.

Justdial and Sulekha are directory listing platforms — they build their own domain authority using your clinic's data and charge you to appear prominently within their platform. If you stop paying, your ranking drops. Iris builds infrastructure on your own domain that you own permanently. The comparison is closer to Practo (see above) than to a direct competitor — they serve different functions. Iris is the exit strategy from aggregator dependency, not another aggregator.

Glam Korean Skin Studio, a skin clinic in Andheri West, Mumbai, went from zero online presence to Google AI Overview citations within 3 days of going live, and organic search rankings within the first week. The full case study is on the website. Iris is actively onboarding clinics across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi NCR, and Pune.