Backlinks used to function as the dominant “authority proxy” in search. AI-mediated search is different: it can evaluate whether your content actually answers patient questions well, repeatedly, across many formats — including video.
In ophthalmology, video is often the most efficient way to reduce uncertainty. A patient can watch a clinician explain lens choices, risks, and recovery in minutes — and understand nuance that text alone sometimes struggles to communicate. Randomised controlled trials in cataract pathways have found that video supplementation to traditional informed consent processes demonstrates improvement in patient understanding of cataract surgery [1]. Separately, video education during preoperative assessments has been shown to improve patient perception of preoperative visits and enhance the overall preoperative experience [2].
At the same time, peer-reviewed analyses repeatedly show that not all social video is trustworthy. Studies assessing YouTube content for cataract surgery patient education found that most videos are insufficient for informing patients adequately [3]. Similarly, systematic analysis of refractive surgery videos on YouTube concluded that these videos do not generally seem useful as educational resources for patients [4]. That gap is why an educational channel led by clinicians and governed like clinical information becomes a strategic asset: it’s a public, persistent record of expertise.
In the AI era, the winning pattern is: clear patient education + consistency + professional accountability. Backlinks still matter, but they increasingly lag behind what patients (and AI systems) treat as “the best answer.”
The shift is structural. Traditional SEO treated links as the primary signal because search engines couldn’t directly evaluate content quality at scale. AI-mediated search can now assess coherence, clinical accuracy, and pedagogical clarity across hundreds of videos and articles simultaneously. That changes which signals matter most.
For clinics willing to invest in governed, clinician-led video education that genuinely improves patient understanding, the opportunity is to build a durable authority signal that compounds over time — one that both patients and AI systems recognise as trustworthy before the first consultation ever occurs.
References
[1] Zhang, M. H., Shu, I., Hodul, D., Cabot, F., & Galor, A. (2019). A randomized, controlled trial of video supplementation on the understanding of the informed consent for cataract surgery. Clinical Ophthalmology, 13, 1713–1719. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31144057/
[2] Wisely, C. E., Wang, D., Henao, A., Slate, E. H., Johnson, J. M., & Choi, D. (2020). Impact of preoperative video education for cataract surgery on patient preparedness. Clinical Ophthalmology, 14, 1543–1551. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32546944/
[3] Bae, S. S., Haas, A., Kabeer, N., Chung, A., & Echegaray, J. J. (2018). YouTube videos in the English language as a patient education resource for cataract surgery. Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery, 44(10), 1189–1194. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28849436/
[4] Kuçuk, B., & Sirakaya, E. (2020). An analysis of YouTube videos as educational resources for patients about refractive surgery. Cornea, 39(4), 491–494. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31868847/
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