How Gemini Answers 'Best Cardiologist in Bangalore': Sources, Signals and Gaps

This article is for cardiologists, cardiac surgeons and the marketing teams who support them. It is about a specific moment: a patient in Bangalore asks Gemini for the best cardiologist, and an answer appears with names, ratings and links. Where did those names come from, and why were yours not among them?

We cannot see inside Gemini, and nobody outside Google can. What you can do is observe the answers, trace the pages they cite and compare them with what the public web says about you. This post gives a protocol for doing that with 30 queries, explains which kinds of source tend to be involved and separates what is documented from what is inference. It reports no results of our own. Run the test on your own practice and read what it shows.

Start with what is documented

Google's developer documentation for Grounding with Google Maps says that Gemini can ground answers in Maps data from more than 250 million places, and that Maps supplies structured facts such as addresses, hours and user ratings, along with related content such as user reviews. That describes the developer product, not the consumer Gemini app, and Google has not published a ranking recipe for either. It does show the shape of the data: place records, ratings and review text.

Google's page on AI features in Search covers AI Overviews and AI Mode rather than the Gemini app, but it states the principle that applies to all of these systems. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet to be a supporting link, and there is no special file or markup required.

Everything beyond that is inference from observation. State it that way in your own notes.

The source families to look for

When you read a Gemini answer for a doctor query, the cited or implied sources usually fall into a few families.

Maps and Business Profile data. Place name, category, rating, review count, address and opening hours. For a solo cardiologist, this is the Google Business Profile. For a hospital, it is the hospital's profile and sometimes a department profile. Our guide to Google Business Profile for doctors covers the set-up.

Directory and marketplace profiles. Doctor listing sites in India carry specialty, experience, fees and patient ratings. Practo is the best-known example; see how to build a Practo profile. These pages often rank for "[specialty] in [city]" queries, so they are natural candidates for retrieval.

Hospital profile pages. The doctor's page on the hospital website, with qualifications, registration details and consultation timings. Weak or missing pages here are a common gap.

Editorial and listicle pages. "Top cardiologists in Bangalore" articles on media and aggregator sites. These are written by third parties, and their selection criteria are often unclear.

Professional and academic profiles. Society membership pages, Google Scholar and publisher author pages, which help establish that the person is who they say they are.

Video and social. YouTube explainers from the doctor, which can support identity and topical association even when the answer does not link to them.

A 30-query protocol

Build the query set before you run anything, so you do not unconsciously pick the queries you already do well on.

1. Ten generic queries. For example: best cardiologist in Bangalore; cardiologist near me; heart specialist in Indiranagar; cardiologist for chest pain Bangalore. Include area names that matter to your catchment.
2. Ten condition or procedure queries. For example: angioplasty doctor in Bangalore; doctor for atrial fibrillation; second opinion for bypass surgery.
3. Five comparison or trust queries. For example: cardiologist at [hospital name] reviews; is [doctor name] a good cardiologist.
4. Five branded queries. Your own name, your name plus hospital, your name plus specialty.

Run each query in the Gemini app and, for comparison, in AI Mode and a standard Google search. Use the same device and location, signed out or in a clean profile. Log the following for each run in a sheet:

• date and time
• surface
• the doctors or hospitals named, in order
• every link shown, with domain
• whether ratings or review counts are displayed, and the numbers
• whether the answer includes caveats or advice to consult a professional
• whether your practice appears and in what position

Do each query on at least two different days. Answers vary, so a name that appears once is weak evidence and a name that appears repeatedly is stronger evidence.

Reading the log

After the runs, build four tallies.

Domain frequency. Count how often each domain is linked. The domains at the top are your source map for that market. Do not assume the order is stable across specialties or cities.

Entity frequency. Count how often each doctor or hospital is named. Then check what those entities have in common. Do they have Business Profiles with many recent reviews? Do their names appear on several third-party pages? Do they have a complete hospital profile page?

Rating range. Note the ratings and review counts attached to named entities. Patients also read these numbers; the BrightLocal survey on local consumer reviews found that 45% of the US consumers it surveyed had used generative AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before. That is a US sample, so treat it as a direction rather than an Indian figure.

Gap list. For your own practice, list where you are missing. Typical gaps are: no Business Profile for the practice, a profile with the wrong category, no recent reviews, a hospital page with no registration number, no third-party mention beyond the hospital site, and inconsistent name spelling across sources.

What you can and cannot influence

Some inputs are within a doctor's control, and some are not. Separate them clearly in your plan.

Within your control:

• A complete, accurate Business Profile with the right primary category, hours, services and a consistent name.
• A doctor profile page on the hospital or practice site with qualifications, state medical council registration details, areas of practice, languages and consultation locations. The Indian Medical Register published by the National Medical Commission lets anyone search registered practitioners by name, year and state council, so the details you publish should match it.
• Consistent naming across the website, directories and profiles. If the register shows one form of your name, use it, and if you publish as another form, make sure the website links the two.
• Educational content from the doctor, reviewed and signed by them, that answers the questions in your query set.
• Accurate directory listings, claimed and updated.

Partly in your control:

• Reviews. Patients write them; you can make it easy to leave one and respond professionally. Do not offer incentives, do not ask for a particular rating and do not publish testimonials in ways that breach NMC advertising rules. Read our summary of the 2026 NMC advertising changes and our guide to Google reviews for doctors.

Outside your control:

• Which third-party listicles exist and who is on them.
• How Gemini weighs any of these inputs.
• Whether a "best" answer appears at all. Medical queries are sensitive, and a system may add caveats or decline to name a single best practitioner.

A note on the word "best"

The query uses "best," but a doctor in India should not describe themselves as best, number one or leading. The same constraint applies in your own content: an article titled "Best cardiologist in Bangalore" on your own site is a claim, not an answer. Write pages that help a patient choose, with qualifications, scope of practice, what a first consultation involves and how to book. Let others make comparative statements. All clinical content should be reviewed by the doctor before publication.

Reading gaps as a work plan

A hypothetical example, for illustration only: a Bangalore cardiology practice runs the 30 queries and finds that the named doctors share three things. Each has a Business Profile with recent reviews, a Practo listing and a hospital page that shows registration details. The practice has the first two, but its hospital page lists the doctor with a photo and a line of text. The fix is a proper profile page, a clear "who we treat" section and a reviewed explainer on the three conditions most often asked about. That is a content task with an owner, not a mystery about an algorithm.

Treat the output as a ranked list of gaps:

Where to start

• Write the 30 queries this week and run them on two separate days.
• Build the domain and entity tallies from the log.
• Compare your Business Profile, hospital page and directory listings against the best-represented competitor.
• Fix identity gaps first (name, registration, category), then content gaps.
• Re-run the same queries in six weeks, and keep the log.

If you want to track which pages and mentions an AI system keeps returning for your name, AiLLMz organises citations and publication workflows that support visibility across AI search and LLMs. Our Gemini ranking service and medical entity SEO work cover the build side.