Before You Cancel Psychology Today

What the research on Psychology Today actually found

Everything below is aggregate and comes from one of three studies. Each measured something specific; none measured bookings.

What should a therapist build instead of relying on Psychology Today?

1. Your own website, made legible. It's the one channel you own outright, and in the AI-referral audit, own-sites were linked in 35% of responses — the ones that got named shared explicit specialization, named conditions, and logistics a reader (human or machine) could extract quickly. The Index found the opposite pattern is common: only 27% of scored homepages clearly said who they help, and the median AI-Readiness was 29/100. The first question for an own-site strategy is simply: can anyone — or anything — tell who you help? That's the first thing the free Recognition Score checks.

2. A claimed, specific Google Business Profile. Free, and it's how "therapist near me" searches resolve; a profile that says "Anxiety therapy for adults in [city]" beats "Counseling services." One caveat that matters for telehealth-only practices: Google's own guidance says businesses without a physical location that serves customers face-to-face may be ineligible for a Business Profile — a Business Profile generally requires qualifying in-person contact, so confirm eligibility before you rely on it. (This is guidance, not a dataset finding — our published data covers homepages and AI citations, not GBP performance.)

3. One or two niche directories where your specialty stands out. If you work with a specific population, a directory built around it lets you be a specialist among specialists rather than one profile among thousands. Guidance, not data — we haven't benchmarked individual directories, and this page won't pretend otherwise.

4. Keeping PT, but rewriting the opening line. Given how visible PT is to the models, one low-cost move is to join the ~1 in 5 whose first sentence names what the client is feeling, rather than the therapist's credentials. If the profile costs you monthly anyway, make the first line do more work.

What does a “legible” therapist website look like?

Here's the shape of a scan result, using the Index's median numbers:

Illustrative composite using the Index's median Recognition and AI-Readiness scores; not an individual practice result. For 86 of the 109 scored homepages, that same "state who you help and what you treat" fix was the scanner's highest-priority recommendation. It's one sentence, it's free, and it improves every channel at once: your site, your PT profile, your Google Business Profile, and what an AI can extract when someone asks it for a therapist.

Is Psychology Today worth it in 2026?

Psychology Today is not the villain, and it's not the strategy — it's a shelf. What decides whether any shelf works, theirs or yours, is whether a tired person scanning at 11pm can tell within seconds that you're for someone like them. Cancelling before your own site can carry that weight tends to make you harder to find, not easier. Make your homepage legible first, rewrite your PT opening line, then decide whether the fee still earns its keep.

This page is part of Strua Practice, built by Dr. Nicholas Gehle, Psy.D., a licensed clinical psychologist. The numbers above come from the three studies described in their method boxes; aggregate methods and caveats are published with each. The Recognition Score is the same deterministic instrument pointed at your homepage: no AI in the scan path, no email required to see your score.