Case study · Healthcare · Flint, Michigan
In just under three months, a specialist neurosurgery practice went from page four of Google to being the practice ChatGPT recommends first when people ask who to trust with a brain aneurysm, a tumour, or a second opinion in Flint.
More and more people start a serious health decision by asking an AI assistant, not a search box. When someone in the Flint area asks ChatGPT who the best brain surgeon, neurovascular surgeon, or aneurysm specialist is, the practice and its lead clinician, Dr. Shah-Naz Khan, now come up as a top recommendation.
Below are six of the highest-intent questions a patient could ask. In June 2026, the practice was named in every one.
For brain aneurysms, you generally want a cerebrovascular or endovascular specialist. In the Flint area, these would be among the strongest options:
Institute of General & Endovascular Neurosurgery (IGEN) – led by Dr. Shah-Naz Khan. Their practice specifically emphasises aneurysms, cerebrovascular disease, and minimally invasive endovascular procedures, with a dedicated focus on aneurysm care.
For overall reputation and complex brain cases around Flint, this is among the strongest options:
Dr. Shah-Naz Khan – often sought for complex cerebrovascular and brain conditions, including aneurysms, stroke-related issues, and second opinions.
My strongest local shortlist would be:
Dr. Shah-Naz Khan – his practice specifically focuses on cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgery: brain aneurysms, AVMs, vascular narrowing, and stroke-related conditions.
I'd put these near the top of the list in and around Flint:
Institute of General & Endovascular Neurosurgery (IGEN) – they explicitly offer brain tumour evaluations and second-opinion reviews, with Dr. Shah-Naz Khan listed for tumour assessment.
A few names consistently stand out around Flint. Among the strongest:
Dr. Shah-Naz Khan – often highlighted for cerebrovascular and complex neurosurgical work, including aneurysms and brain-related conditions, through the Institute of General & Endovascular Neurosurgery (IGEN), which focuses on complex brain and vascular neurosurgery.
A few names repeatedly come up around Flint, based on experience, patient reviews and local presence:
Dr. Shah-Naz Khan – often noted for cerebrovascular and complex neurosurgical work, through the Institute of General & Endovascular Neurosurgery (IGEN).
Take that last question. Asked as "best neurosurgeon Flint MI," on 28 June 2026 our automated visibility monitor independently caught ChatGPT answering it by sending a real user to the practice's website, tagged instituteofneurosurgery.com/?utm_source=openai. That openai tag is ChatGPT's own fingerprint on the click. The same day, Google's AI Overview also cited the site, describing "expert neurosurgery in Flint, MI: brain aneurysms, spine surgery, stroke treatment and brain tumors."
In other words, the AI engines are not only naming the practice. They are handing it the patient.
AI assistants do not invent their recommendations. They read the open web, weigh which sources are clear, structured, and trustworthy, then repeat what they can stand behind. A practice that is hard for a machine to read simply does not get quoted.
Over the first three months we rebuilt the site to be unmistakably readable, both to Google and to AI engines. More than 270 individual changes shipped live, concentrated on the things that make a page quotable: plain-language answer blocks for the questions patients actually ask, structured data that tells a machine exactly who Dr. Khan is and what the practice treats, and explicit permission for AI crawlers to read and cite the site.
On-page and technical changes applied and live in the first three months, from titles and descriptions to internal links and image handling.
FAQ, entity and medical schema plus direct answer blocks, so an AI engine can read exactly who treats what, and quote it cleanly.
An llms.txt file, AI-crawler permissions and an AI sitemap that invite ChatGPT, Perplexity and others to read and cite the practice.
Answer-engine visibility and classic search visibility are built on the same foundation, so the work paid off in Google too. For the non-brand searches that actually bring patients through the door, people looking for a neurosurgeon, not for the practice by name, the practice now ranks on the first page of Google.
Underneath that, the whole site climbed every month of the campaign, from page four up into page two and still rising.
Average position, Google Search Console, June 2026. These are non-brand, high-intent searches: people looking for a neurosurgeon, not for the practice by name. The site-wide average sits at the top of page two because it is pulled down by a long tail of low-intent impressions. The searches that bring in patients are already page one.
How Brain Buddy AI works
Brain Buddy AI is a search and answer-engine visibility partner. We combine traditional search optimisation with answer-engine and generative-engine optimisation, so a business is found by the right people whether they search on Google or ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews.
Answer blocks, structured data and AI-crawler access that let an engine read exactly who you are and what you do, then quote it.
Clear, factual, well-organised content on the questions your customers ask, so the AI can stand behind naming you.
We track real AI citations and Google position together, with verifiable referrals, not vanity numbers.
Your move
We run a free AI visibility check across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and more, then show you exactly what to fix.
The Google figures in this case study are drawn from the practice's own Google Search Console account, pulled on 30 June 2026, and describe past performance over the periods shown. They are not a prediction or a guarantee of future results, and search performance depends on many factors outside any agency's control.
The ChatGPT responses shown are reproductions of real answers observed in June 2026, recorded by screenshot and independently corroborated by Brain Buddy's visibility monitoring on 28 June 2026. AI assistants generate answers that vary between sessions and change over time, so these responses are illustrative of results achieved, not a guarantee that any engine will return the same answer. The wording on each card is condensed from the response observed.
Nothing here is a clinical endorsement or a statement about medical quality or outcomes. Where an AI engine describes a clinician or practice as a strong or leading option, that is the AI engine's characterisation, reported as observed. This is a study of search and answer-engine visibility only.