A patient who wants to see a private GP asks three things: who would see me, are they registered, and what does a first appointment cost? An answer engine, or a careful reader, needs the page to name the doctor, give a registration anyone can check, say who regulates the clinic and give a price with what it covers. We reviewed private GP pages from eight clinics that appeared in search results for a private GP in Leeds and in Manchester.
The regulator was usually named. The doctor, and a way to check the doctor, less often. Seven of the eight named the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and five published a price for a GP appointment. Four named a doctor in the page code they returned, one showed a General Medical Council (GMC) reference number and none linked to a doctor’s entry on the GMC register.
What we found on these eight clinics’ pages
All five that published a price priced an appointment in person, and three of them priced more than one length or type of appointment. Five said what the price includes or what costs extra, such as tests, prescriptions or letters, and seven described what happens at the appointment. Two said whether a patient needs to be registered or referred to book. Three said whether health insurance covers the appointment, naming an insurer, or that the service is self-pay. Five showed reviews, a rating, a review count or a link to a review platform, and two carried a visible date for their content. Information not found on the pages we reviewed may appear elsewhere on the clinic’s website or be given when booking.
Download the eight-clinic observation sheet (CSV) · See the eight-clinic table
Why the name, the number and the link matter
The GMC licenses doctors to practise in the UK and keeps a register of doctors that is available to the public so that people can identify qualified medical practitioners. NHS England’s data dictionary says every doctor is given a GMC reference number on first contact with the GMC, and that for each registered doctor the register lists the reference number, name, the year and place of their primary medical degree, their registration status and date, any entry on the GP or Specialist Register, and any publicly available fitness to practise history since October 2005.
On the pages we reviewed, four clinics named a doctor in the page code they returned. Two more pages had a heading for their GPs whose names appeared only after the page’s scripts ran in a browser. One clinic showed a GMC reference number beside seven of the eight clinicians it named; another described its doctors as GMC-registered without giving numbers. None linked a doctor’s name to a register entry. Names and numbers may appear elsewhere on these websites, for example on team pages, so this is a page observation, not a finding about any clinic. A number lets a reader search the register; a link to the entry saves them the search.
The CQC treats private GP services, including doctors who visit patients at home, as independent healthcare and publishes guidance on how it inspects them. It keeps a page on its website for each provider and each location, rates services as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate, and publishes its inspection reports so that people can check and compare services. The CQC also says that a service with an overall rating must display it, including on websites where the service is described. We did not check any clinic’s CQC record, so we cannot say which clinics hold a rating, and nothing here is a finding about how any clinic displays one.
Seven clinics named the CQC; for three of them, the only mention was the description of a logo image. One linked to the CQC page for its own location in the page code it returned. Two more linked to a CQC page, but when we opened the linked pages they were for other locations run by the same provider, in other cities. That may simply be a shared website footer; we did not check whether those clinics have their own CQC pages, and this is not a finding that they do not. When we opened all the reviewed pages in a browser and let their scripts run, we found no further links to a clinic’s own CQC page. A plain link to the right location’s page gives a reader, or an AI system, a direct route to the record.
Three useful patterns to take from the review
1. Put the number beside the name, then link it
One clinic’s home page introduces its clinicians with their role and their specialist areas and, for seven of the eight, a GMC reference number. It was the only clinic of the eight to show a number. None of the eight linked a doctor’s name or number to the doctor’s entry on the GMC register.
A reader who has the number can search the register and compare the entry with the page. A link to the entry would take them straight there, and an AI system that reads the page would find the name, the number and the register address together.
We did not open any register entry or check any registration; we recorded what the pages contain.
2. Price the first appointment and say what is in and what is out
Two hospital-based GP services, on pages built from the same template, give one price for a set appointment length, then list what the appointment includes where appropriate (a private prescription, a referral to a consultant, a referral for scans or X-rays), say the patient receives an outcome letter and, under a separate heading, list what the service does not offer. They say further tests are not included and that the GP will discuss their cost first.
An independent clinic’s fees page says its consultation fee covers any prescriptions and referral letters written during the consultation, that blood tests are charged separately, and what a follow-up costs. Either way, the reader learns what the number covers as well as the number. One other clinic listed its appointment lengths under a prices heading with no figures, in the page code and in a browser.
Observed page structure, not an endorsement of any clinic or a check of its prices.
3. Answer the booking questions, and date the answers
Two clinics said a patient does not need to be registered with them, or with an NHS GP, to book; one added that a patient’s NHS registration is unaffected. Three others recommended staying registered with an NHS GP, without saying whether registration is needed to book. Three clinics answered the insurance question: one said it is self-pay only and gives an itemised receipt for a patient to claim, one said no insurance is needed because patients pay for each appointment, and one said insurance is unlikely to cover a private GP consultation apart from two named insurers. A fourth said some policies may cover consultations, without naming an insurer or saying the service is self-pay.
Two of the eight carried a visible date. The clearest named a doctor as the page’s clinical content reviewer, with the review date and the date of the next review. The other dated its price list. A reader, or an AI system, that meets a price or a policy statement can then tell how recent it is.
A practical review of your own private GP page
Open your GP page and your fees page and work through these questions. Use the worksheet to record the evidence, the person responsible and the next change. The tick boxes below are a temporary reading aid; they do not create a score or save your work.
- Name the GPs on the booking page itself, in the page text rather than only in a script, with each clinician’s role.
- Show each doctor’s GMC reference number beside their name and link it to their entry on the GMC register.
- Name the CQC (in England) in words and link to your service’s own CQC page with a plain link, not only a logo or a widget.
- Give the price for each appointment type and length, and say what is included and what costs extra, such as tests, prescriptions and letters.
- Say whether a patient needs to be registered or referred, and whether the service is self-pay or which insurers, if any, recognise it.
- Show a review date and name the doctor who approved the facts.
Download the 10-question worksheet (CSV)
A content-review aid, not a regulatory checklist or professional advice. Check the CQC’s and GMC’s guidance and your own obligations, and have a responsible doctor approve the facts before publication. Giving each clinician’s role and qualification also helps with titles: the Committee of Advertising Practice advises that anyone referring to themselves as ‘Dr’ or ‘a doctor’ should take care not to imply a general medical qualification they do not hold.
How this relates to AI visibility
An AI assistant answering “which private GP near me” can only repeat what it can find and connect. A named doctor, a GMC number with a link to the register and a link to the clinic’s CQC page give it specific facts it can check against other sources; a logo and a general claim give it less. These checks identify information a reader can verify; they do not show whether a page is cited in AI answers. Our page on AI visibility for private healthcare explains how we test the answers, and our measurement guide explains how to keep that evidence separate from a page review.
The clinics we reviewed
We do not name the clinics. Several observations concern information that is absent from the pages we reviewed, and a page review is not a fair basis for public judgements about individual businesses. Clinics are labelled A to D (Leeds) and E to H (Manchester); letters were assigned at random within each city and do not follow search order. The page addresses, capture times and SHA-256 hashes are held on file. A clinic in the sample can ask us for its own coding.
“Not found in reviewed pages” means we did not find that information in the page code returned for the one or two pages reviewed for that clinic; it may appear elsewhere on its website, appear once scripts run in a browser, or be provided when booking. A recorded feature does not establish accuracy or completeness.
| Clinic | GP appointment price | GMC number for a named doctor | Link to a GMC register entry | Link to its CQC page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clinic A Leeds | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Links to another location’s CQC page |
| Clinic B Leeds | Found | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages |
| Clinic C Leeds | Found | Found | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages |
| Clinic D Leeds | Found | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages |
| Clinic E Manchester | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages |
| Clinic F Manchester | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Found |
| Clinic G Manchester | Found | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages |
| Clinic H Manchester | Found | Not found in reviewed pages | Not found in reviewed pages | Links to another location’s CQC page |
Download all twelve recorded features for each clinic (CSV)
Method, boundaries and corrections
We chose private GP clinics rather than physiotherapy clinics because every part of the patient’s question can be checked for a GP: each doctor is on the GMC register, and the CQC inspects private GP services in England. The same review of physiotherapy clinics would need a different register and a separate check of which services the CQC covers.
On 27 September 2026 we wrote down a selection rule, then ran one web search per city, “private GP Leeds” and “private GP Manchester”, with the web search tool of the AI assistant used for this research, not directly on a named search engine. In result order, we took the first four distinct private GP clinics with physical clinic premises in or serving each city, counting each clinic once. We excluded results outside the UK, NHS and other public-sector pages, hospital or clinic groups’ national directories and landing pages that did not name a clinic in the city, booking marketplaces, directories, comparison and review sites, online-only GP services, social media profiles and articles not published by a clinic. The query did not mention price, so that it would not favour pages that publish prices. Both searches returned UK results, so the written fallback of adding “UK” to the query was not needed.
The four Leeds clinics were the first four eligible results. In Manchester, four results were passed over and the next eligible result taken: one page that returned HTTP 403 on two attempts, two that returned a script-based security check to our capture tool (another tool could read one of them, but the rule applies to the capture tool), and one online-only service. A fifth, a home-visiting GP service, was excluded after its page was captured because the page named no clinic premises; that was a judgement. Two of the eight are locations of the same hospital group whose GP pages share a template; the rule counts locations, not brands, so both stand. Four of the eight, one in Leeds and three in Manchester, are outside the city named in the query and present their pages as serving it; counting them was a judgement. One Manchester clinic runs a GP clinic at a hospital whose own GP service is also in the sample; they are different providers and were coded separately. The sample is purposive, not random, and search order favours clinics that are already easy to find.
For each clinic we reviewed the page the search returned and, where that page linked to one, its fees or prices page; five of the eight linked one. For one clinic the returned page was a news post on the clinic’s own website, which the rule treats as the clinic’s page. We captured the returned HTML with UTC timestamps and SHA-256 hashes and extracted the text and link list, including fallback content for browsers without scripts. We did not run JavaScript for the coding, so content that loads only in the browser, and anything shown only inside images, was not coded; image descriptions (alt text) were read. We coded the text in the page code, links and image descriptions, not structured data or dates held only in page code. As a separate check on the same day, we opened every reviewed page in a browser, let its scripts run and recorded links to the GMC register and the CQC website, and we checked two pages for doctors’ names and one for prices; the results are described above. We did not contact clinics, request prices, check the GMC register or CQC records, or visit other pages.
Each clinic was coded on twelve features using a written codebook. A price counts where a figure is given for a GP appointment a new patient can book; membership fees alone do not count. A doctor named only as a page’s content reviewer, where the page does not say the doctor works at the clinic, does not count as a named doctor. A general five-star claim without reviews, a stated rating, a count or a platform link does not count as reviews. Research and coding were assisted by AI. An independent review re-coded the captures and re-fetched the pages and sources; it found two links we had counted as clinics’ own CQC pages that go to other locations, one CQC mention that was only an image description, one insurance code that did not meet our written test and one clinician without a GMC number. All were corrected before publication. Presence of a feature does not establish its accuracy or completeness.
The regulatory statements above are taken from the linked CQC, NHS England and Committee of Advertising Practice pages as read on 27 September 2026. The GMC’s own website refused our automated requests, so the description of the GMC register is taken from NHS England’s pages. This narrow page review does not determine whether any clinic meets GMC guidance, CQC requirements or any legal requirement.
Send specific corrections, with the page address and passage, to hello@answari.co.uk. Later corrections will be dated here.