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The way patients find you has changed

Your next patient won't Google you. They'll ask AI.

MaxConnex is a Sydney-based answer engine optimisation (AEO) agency that gets Australian healthcare practices named when patients ask ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. An AI answer does not show ten links. It names two or three practices. If yours is not one of them, a competitor is being recommended instead.

No lock-in contracts Healthcare specialists AHPRA and TGA aware Australian owned

9:41
ChatGPT
I've just moved to Bondi and need a GP. Who are the best practices near me?

Based on patient reviews and what each practice publishes about its services, a few well regarded general practices near Bondi:

  1. 1. Wattlebrook Family Practice : bulk billing, same-day appointments
  2. 2. Corella Street Medical : chronic disease management
  3. 3. Harbourline Health : after-hours and weekends

Want me to help you book with one of them?

Message
Named first Cited by name

Illustration. Practice names are fictional.

Search has changed. Most practices haven't.

68%

of US Google searches now end without a click

Source: SparkToro, 2026
900M

people use ChatGPT every week

Source: OpenAI, February 2026
89%

of healthcare keywords now show a Google AI Overview

Source: BrightEdge, December 2025
2028

the year AI search is projected to overtake traditional search

Source: Semrush

Some of the practices we have worked with

Fortius Allied Health Sunshine Coast Orthopaedic Group Nuvo Health Metta Medical Centre My Clinic No.1 Fertility Sydney Premier Medical Anna Cohen & Co Dr Joe Coory A/Prof Daevyd Rodda Dr Chris Conyard Quinn Plastic Surgery
Central Sydney ENT Mayfield Medical Connection Sydney Smile Centre MindLens Psychology Thrive Psychology Smithfield Active Physio Bella Complexion Aesthetics by Elsa Age Amazingly drJ Clinics Dr Face

And beyond healthcare

  • The North Agency
  • Discovery Childcare
  • Christie's International Real Estate
  • Henderson & Co.
  • The End Piece
  • Neosframe

Why a specialist

AI is deciding which practices to trust. It is deciding now.

Answer Engine Optimisation is not a switch you flip later. Models are deciding which sources they trust right now, and those decisions compound. A practice an engine already trusts is far easier to keep naming than one it has never read.

Move first and the advantage builds on itself. Wait, and you spend years catching up to a competitor the model already trusts.

  • Healthcare first, on purpose

    Seven years in pharmaceuticals, then tech, before this agency existed. AHPRA and TGA rules are not something we read up on for your account, they are the environment we came from. Most agencies avoid healthcare for exactly that reason.

  • One specialist, not an account manager

    You work directly with the person doing the work. No brief relayed through a third party, no junior learning on your practice, and no report assembled the night before a meeting.

  • A dashboard, not a slide

    Every mention, citation and ranking shift across every engine, live, benchmarked from the day you start. You never have to take our word for whether it is working.

Proof we've done it

It works. Here's the evidence.

All case studies →

Every case study is anonymised by default, and every figure traces back to a recorded answer or a source system rather than an estimate. Where a client has given written consent, we name them.

General practice

A single-site GP and skin cancer clinic

10 → 109 AI-attributed bookings per month, May to September 2026

$39.59 → $10.54
Google Ads cost per new patient phone call, June to September 2026, on an unchanged daily budget cap
120
Bookings attributed to ChatGPT specifically, May to 23 September 2026
Read the case study

General practice

A 22-location GP group, Sydney

1 in 3 Tracked AI answers that cite the group by name

50%
Of Claude answers name the group, its strongest engine
22
Locations published as distinct machine-readable entities
Read the case study

Specialist surgery

An orthopaedic surgeon, Sunshine Coast

3 of 3 Major AI assistants that recommend him for shoulder surgery on the Sunshine Coast, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini

1st
Named first by Claude and by Gemini, in every answer where they named a surgeon
2 of 3
ChatGPT answers that recommend him, each linking straight to the website we rebuilt
Read the case study

Fertility

A fertility group, Melbourne and Sydney

32 → 2,241 AI crawler fetches per month, June to August 2026

+528%
Crawler activity, July against August, like for like
11 → 89
AI-referred visitors per month, real people rather than crawlers
Read the case study

General practice

A Newcastle general practice, established 1938

51% Of tracked AI answers name the practice

35%
Of tracked answers cite the practice's own site
53%
Citation rate on Gemini and Perplexity, its strongest engines
Read the case study

Cosmetic and skin

A skin clinic in the Hunter region

37% Of tracked AI answers cite the clinic by name

53%
Citation rate on Gemini, its strongest engine
45%
Of tracked answers name the clinic at all
Read the case study

AI-optimised websites

Most practices don't have a visibility problem. They have a website problem.

An AI assistant can only recommend what it can read. Most clinic websites look fine to a person and give a machine almost nothing: no services it can identify, no practitioners, no locations it can trust.

We build websites the other way round, structured to be read by machines from the first line and designed to turn the patients they send you into bookings.

What a machine reads on a typical clinic site

  • Services offered not found
  • Practitioners not found
  • Locations and hours not found
  • Answers to patient questions not found

Illustration. Typical result on a clinic website we are asked to review.

How we do it

Four steps. From invisible to recommended.

  1. 01

    Audit

    See where you stand.

    A full scan across every major engine, benchmarked against your three closest competitors, with the evidence stored so the before and after is not opinion.

  2. 02

    Implement

    Done for you.

    Structure, entities, listings and answer content deployed end to end. You approve, we build. Most of the movement lands inside the first 60 days.

  3. 03

    Report

    Proof, every month.

    A live dashboard tracking every mention, citation and ranking shift across every engine, plus a monthly report that shows the losses as well as the wins.

  4. 04

    Optimise

    Compound the wins.

    We widen the set of questions you own and adapt as the engines change, quarter after quarter. Early visibility compounds, and we watch it month by month because the engines keep changing.

Maxwell Donnellan, founder of MaxConnex

From the founder

Healthcare first, agency second.

I spent seven years in pharmaceuticals. Long enough to learn how Australian healthcare works, how heavily it is regulated, and why most agencies will not go near it.

Then I spent time in tech, and saw how completely software now decides what people find. Put the two together and the problem was obvious: patients had started asking AI who to see, the answer named two or three practices, and almost no clinic had a website AI could read well enough to name.

I did not start an agency and then pick healthcare as a niche. I spent my career inside the industry first, and built this to solve a problem I had already watched from the inside.

Maxwell Donnellan

Founder, MaxConnex

More about Max

Answers

Common questions

What is AI visibility and why does it matter for a practice?

AI visibility is whether ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini name your practice when a patient asks who to see. It matters because an AI answer names two or three practices rather than listing ten links, so the list you need to be on is far shorter than a page of search results, and being absent from it is invisible rather than merely ranked low.

How is this different from SEO?

SEO works to rank your website among the links on a search results page. AEO works to have your practice named inside the answer itself. They share foundations and we do both, but the signals that decide an AI citation are not the same as the ones that decide a ranking, and treating them as one job is why most practices are invisible to AI despite ranking adequately on Google.

How quickly will we see results?

In our client work so far, the first new AI appearances have usually shown up within one to two months of the work going live, though it varies with the market and the starting point. Structure and listings move fastest, authority built through content compounds over three to six months. We benchmark before we start, so what changed is measurable rather than asserted.

Do you only work with healthcare?

Healthcare is what we specialise in and it is the large majority of our work, because the compliance constraints and the way patients search are specific enough that general agencies get them wrong. We also work with a small number of businesses in real estate, professional services, childcare and retail, and we say so plainly rather than pretending to be exclusive.

Who actually does the work?

Maxwell Donnellan, directly. He spent seven years in pharmaceuticals and then time in tech before founding MaxConnex, so the compliance side is background rather than research. There is no account manager relaying messages and no junior learning on your practice. That works because the measurement, reporting and deployment run through systems we built, so the hours go into strategy and execution rather than into assembling reports.

Is there a lock-in contract?

No. There is a setup phase and then a monthly retainer you can leave. If the reporting is not showing movement, the arrangement should not be what keeps you.

How do you handle AHPRA and TGA advertising rules?

They are the starting point rather than a review step at the end. No testimonials in advertising for regulated health services, no prohibited representations, and for cosmetic clinics no Schedule 4 product names, no before and after imagery and no pricing on prescription treatments. We have declined to publish work that would have breached these.

What does it cost?

AI visibility starts at $2,500 setup and $500 a month for a single-location practice, with published tiers for groups on the pricing page. Website builds are scoped individually, and we ask for your budget range up front so the first call is useful rather than a guessing game. Everything is quoted plus GST, and there is no lock-in.

Do I need a new website to be recommended by AI?

Not always. Some sites only need structure added, which is a refresh rather than a rebuild. But if an AI assistant cannot identify your services, practitioners and locations from your site, no amount of work around it will fully compensate, and a rebuild is usually the faster and cheaper fix. Our free check scores your current site in about thirty seconds.

Find out what AI says about your practice

We run your practice against every major AI engine and show you exactly where you stand, and who is being named instead of you. No charge, no lock-in.

Free AI visibility audit