While Competitors Chased ChatGPT, GoodRx Won AI Overviews

In this week’s episode of Voices of Search, we spoke with John Vantine, Director of SEO at GoodRx, about navigating one of the highest-stakes categories on the internet: healthcare. 

With Google’s AI Overviews appearing in over 90% of informational queries, the sites that get cited enjoy prime visibility—and GoodRx has made major gains competing with WebMD, Healthline, and other SEO giants.

John revealed how his team balances user experience, subject matter expertise, and technical signals to win in AI discovery. More importantly, he explained why refusing to chase hype cycles and staying grounded in what users actually do today beats optimizing for theoretical future scenarios.

Key Takeaways From this Episode:

• AI Overviews are the real battleground because most users experience generative search through Google, not standalone tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity.
• Content integrity is non-negotiable in high-stakes categories because no amount of SEO can build a moat around content that doesn’t deserve user trust.
• SEO teams need to sit in product organizations rather than marketing to build the technical foundations and partnerships that will define AI search success.
• Back-to-basics technical SEO matters more now because AI crawlers are less sophisticated than Googlebot and need crystal-clear signals to discover content.
• Partnerships with AI platforms represent the “gold medal” opportunity where brands get recommended without users explicitly searching for them.

Cut Through the Hype: Focus on What Users Actually Do

While executives arrive with screenshots from LinkedIn growth hackers and breathless articles about agentic search, John’s team stays focused on measurable behavior.

“I feel like part of my responsibility is to help folks cut through the hype and focus on what’s real,” John explained. “The tech press acts as a glorified PR machine for OpenAI and a handful of other companies.”

When leadership asks about optimizing for ChatGPT Health or Perplexity, John pulls them back to reality with data. 

“All the data I’m seeing is that the vast majority of folks are using Google. Maybe they’re using ChatGPT a little bit, but it’s not at the expense of their Google usage. AI Overviews are the battleground.”

This shifts everything. Instead of chasing visibility in standalone AI tools with uncertain adoption, GoodRx dominates AI Overviews—where millions encounter generative search today.

John shares specific search results with leadership, showing how content types manifest within real SERPs. “What’s working today for us—we’re still seeing a lot of traditional organic search traffic. We have not been hammered the way some of our competitors have.”

The 50/50 Balance: SEOs Meet Subject Matter Experts

In healthcare, getting content wrong has real consequences. GoodRx balances optimization with medical accuracy through true 50/50 partnerships.

“The balance between SEO input and subject matter expert input is something like 50/50,” John said. “You need full-time SEOs focused on editorial collaboration, but they also need flexibility and understanding that SEO isn’t the only way.”

How the Partnership Works

This isn’t about SEOs dictating strategy to medical experts. It’s empowerment through education:

• SEOs teach underlying principles, not just data and search volume
• Teams do regular content performance readouts so medical professionals see what’s working
• They celebrate wins and losses equally, then iterate based on results
• Everything feeds back into updating the content calendar

“Don’t hide the stuff that didn’t work. Put that into action as you update the content calendar,” John said.

The partnership works because neither side succeeds without the other. Medical professionals understand what patients need. SEOs understand how to structure and distribute that information for maximum discoverability.

Content Integrity: You Can’t Polish a Turd

John’s most quotable insight cuts to why many AI visibility strategies fail: 

“You can’t turn shit into strawberries. The best SEO in the world isn’t going to get you anywhere if your content or your product sucks. No one is spending time building a moat around a junkyard because nobody wants what’s in there.”

This philosophy explains why GoodRx weathered algorithm updates better than competitors chasing search volume regardless of quality.

“Content is not going to grow long-term without integrity. You can’t build a moat without integrity,” John said. GoodRx prioritizes genuine user value over SEO theater, trusting that good content properly structured wins over time.

In healthcare, especially, users sense when information is trustworthy versus content-farmed. AI models are getting better at making these same distinctions.

Why SEO Belongs in Product, Not Marketing

John keeps SEO embedded in product and engineering teams rather than marketing—a choice with strategic implications for AI visibility.

“I’ve been very intentional in keeping SEO in product and not in marketing,” John explained. “It means building a stronger working relationship with marketing because we have to build those bridges.”

What Being in Product Enables

SEO teams sitting alongside engineers can:

• Build partnerships with AI platforms and implement MCP protocols directly
• Participate in the same ceremonies, road mapping sessions, and standups
• Write tickets and spec features together rather than submitting requests from outside

“I don’t know if that’s happening on an engineering team embedded in marketing,” John said. “That’s how this happens in an SEO-friendly way.”

But GoodRx SEO teams still collaborate actively with social media managers, PR coordinators, and brand teams, creating content where AI models train. “Some train on Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Reddit. A lot of the things influencing those platforms come from the marketing team.”

Back-to-Basics Technical SEO Matters More Now

While some SEOs rush to implement bleeding-edge tactics, John argues generative search requires doubling down on fundamentals.

“For generative search, it has necessitated a back-to-basics approach,” John said. “I don’t think effective SEO for generative search has necessitated a major shift in strategy.”

The reason is practical: AI crawlers are less sophisticated than Googlebot. 

“My understanding of the crawlers for ChatGPT and Perplexity is they’re not very sophisticated. They don’t render JavaScript. You need a really solid technical SEO foundation for them to even discover your content.”

This makes technical excellence more important, not less. “Your CMS and the underpinnings of your ecosystem are more important now than they ever were. Otherwise, these tools just won’t find your content. It’s expensive to crawl the web.”

John’s team considers expanded internal linking, dynamic link modules, and accordion-style FAQs—not as algorithm tricks, but as user experience improvements that also aid discovery. “It needs to be useful to the user in order to resonate with a search engine.”

The Partnership Gold Medal

When discussing the biggest AI visibility opportunity, John didn’t hesitate: partnerships with AI platforms represent the “gold medal.”

He pointed to Mayo Clinic’s historical partnership with Google’s knowledge panels. “There were a handful of partners who had this reserved spot. You’d search for asthma, and there was always a thing there to Mayo Clinic. Man, that is the golden partnership.”

The Expanding Opportunity

With ChatGPT Health’s launch, these opportunities are growing. AllTrails, Instacart, and Peloton all have apps in ChatGPT that get mentioned when users weren’t even looking for them. “It’s almost like doing SEO within the ChatGPT ecosystem.”

John sees massive potential for GoodRx: “They said like a third of searches are health and wellness related. At least a quarter would logically end in a prescription. If there’s a GoodRx app in ChatGPT, how often are users going to get guided directly into that?”

Compare that to current AI visibility optimization:

• Most SEOs optimize content, hoping a crumb falls off the table
• Maybe they get mentioned with a citation to their homepage
• Maybe it’s one pixel by one pixel on mobile
• Maybe one person clicks

The contrast is stark. Partnerships mean proactive recommendations. Traditional optimization means hoping for footnote citations that users might not see.

Fanout Queries: Old Wine, New Bottle

When asked about fanout queries—extracting follow-up searches AI tools generate—John revealed GoodRx has been doing essentially the same thing for years.

“It looks pretty similar to where we land organically with the process we generate our article outlines with,” John explained. “Here’s the topic, the subtopics, then the next questions a user might have.”

The output from fanout tools closely matches People Also Ask and other Google features predicting intent. “I think it’s all part of the same thing.”

His advice is pragmatic: if you don’t have something like this in your content pipeline, you should. Whether it’s fanout queries or other tools doesn’t matter as much as the principle.

“You need to get ahead of what the next step for the user might be because AI Overviews do exactly that. They answer your question, then figure out what else you might need,” John said. “If you can build that into your content, you’re going to get cited over and over.”

Navigating Executive Hype Without Losing Credibility

John faces a familiar challenge as every other SEO: executives arriving with LinkedIn screenshots asking why the team isn’t implementing viral tactics.

His approach combines data, competitive context, and measured communication. “I remind them we’re focused on what matters. I back these conversations with data showing our competitors’ traffic. The ones chasing search volume are down significantly and continuing to bleed traffic. We’re not.”

This comparative framing shifts from absolute performance to relative positioning. GoodRx holds steady while competitors decline—a strong signal that the strategy works.

He also helps executives understand that if viral tactics worked consistently, everyone would use them. “If this worked, everyone would be doing it. And nobody would use Google anymore because it would be all AI slop.”

The Multi-Platform Imperative

GoodRx doesn’t limit its strategy to owned properties. Google increasingly surfaces content from LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube in dedicated carousels.

“There’s a new carousel called ‘what people are saying.’ It’s pulling in posts from LinkedIn, TikTok posts, and Instagram content,” John explained. “These are slots we can show up in or not. If we want a share of voice in all the slots Google gives us, we need to be playing on all these platforms.”

John advocates starting somewhere rather than perfecting every platform immediately. “We don’t have to do every single thing perfectly. We don’t have to come up with the ultimate strategy. Let’s just start now and continue to iterate.”

The Name Stays SEO

Despite new acronyms—GEO, AEO, AIO—John sticks with SEO. “The acronym hasn’t changed. I’m still using SEO. Maybe the E stands for everywhere instead of engine.”

His philosophy: search volume isn’t disappearing. 

“There are not less problems to be solved or questions to be answered in 2026. The number of humans with health problems hasn’t changed. Maybe it’s gone up. But the way they’re looking for answers has changed a little bit.”

As long as users ask questions somewhere—through devices, cars, Alexa, Siri—SEO teams will optimize to ensure content appears as answers. “It might be a summary read by a robot on a Tesla heads-up display or on their watch. We’ll still make sure crawlers can access that content and understand it’s trustworthy.”

The Bottom Line

GoodRx’s AI visibility success stems from principles that feel almost unfashionable: focus on content integrity, prioritize what users actually do, invest in technical fundamentals, and build partnerships enabling breakthrough opportunities.

John’s approach offers a blueprint for high-stakes categories. Stay embedded in product where partnerships and implementations happen. Empower subject matter experts while teaching SEO principles. Cut through executive hype with competitive data. Remember that no optimization fixes fundamentally weak content.

The opportunity in AI search is real, but it’s not about implementing every LinkedIn trend. It’s about building sustainable advantages through content users trust, technical foundations AI crawlers can navigate, and partnerships that position your brand where decisions happen.

As John said about the most overlooked message for executives: “Are our users actually using these tools? As SEOs, we have this tendency to jump to the answer without thinking about the question behind the action.”

Start where users actually are. Build for where they’re going. Don’t optimize for scenarios that exist only in keynote presentations.

Voices of Search is a daily SEO and content marketing podcast hosted by Jordan Keone and Tyson Stockton. The show delivers actionable strategies and data-driven insights to help marketers navigate the ever-evolving world of search engine optimization and content marketing. New episodes air weekly, covering everything from technical SEO to AI discovery, featuring industry leaders and practitioners sharing real-world frameworks and proven tactics.

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