Updated 4 Oct 2026. This post was first published on 26 Apr 2026. That version described pages, markup, insurance plans, frame brands and citation results that the practice's site does not have and that were never recorded, and it reported sixty days of results for a site whose build had started thirteen days earlier. It has been rewritten so that every statement below can be checked against the site's code or against the evidence ledger.
Nostrand Optical is an independent optometry practice at 1018C Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, open since 2001. Work on its new website started in mid-April 2026. This post covers what the build included, what was validated on launch day, and what has been checked and logged since.
There is no recorded baseline from before the rebuild, so this post doesn't describe one.
The build: what the site actually has
The site is a Next.js build. It launched with home, about, services, insurance and contact pages, plus a blog that started with three articles.
The structured data, as it stands in the site's code:
- LocalBusiness and MedicalBusiness markup on the business, with the address, geo coordinates, opening hours, phone, email and payment types, and
sameAslinks to the practice's Yelp and Healthgrades profiles. - Person markup for the optometrist, linked to the business.
- FAQPage markup on the home, services and insurance pages: fourteen questions across the three, as of this update.
- BlogPosting and BreadcrumbList markup on blog posts. The breadcrumbs were added on 1 May 2026.
The insurance page names each plan and payment option the practice accepts: Medicaid, Medicare, UHC, Anthem, Health First, Fidelis, CareCredit and union plans. The services page lists each service in plain text.
This build, offered to other practices: AI search optimization for optometrists.
Launch day: four types validated
On launch day, Google's Rich Results Test validated four rich-result types for the site, with zero errors. I ran that test myself. No screenshot was kept, and which four types they were wasn't written down.
Earlier versions of this post, and several other pages on this site, listed the four types, in four different ways. One of those lists included a Product type the site has never had. Since the record doesn't say which four they were, this post doesn't name them.
Validated is the right word. Passing Google's Rich Results Test means the markup is eligible for an enhancement, not that Google will display one — Google says so itself, and it shows FAQ rich results only to a narrow set of authoritative sites.
What has been logged since
On 8 Sep 2026 I ran a set of AI citation checks for the practice. Each is a single-day spot check, not a ranking, and the misses are listed with the hits. The transcripts and screenshots are on the evidence ledger.
- ChatGPT, "optometrist in Crown Heights Brooklyn that takes Medicaid": cited, second of four, with the correct address and phone.
- ChatGPT, "eye doctor near Nostrand Avenue Brooklyn open Saturday": cited, first of five, with the Saturday hours quoted from the site.
- ChatGPT, "best optometrist in Brooklyn": not cited. The six practices it named all had 4.7–4.9 ratings and 179–564 reviews.
- Perplexity, the Medicaid prompt: cited, named first, with nostrandoptical.com as the cited source.
- Google AI Overviews, the Medicaid prompt: cited, one of two practices listed; both cited sources were Nostrand's own pages.
- Gemini, the Medicaid prompt: not cited.
It shows that the markup validated on launch day, and that on 8 Sep 2026 ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews named the practice for a Medicaid question and ChatGPT named it for a Saturday-hours question, while Gemini and the “best optometrist” prompt did not. It doesn't show that the markup caused any of those citations. For the “best” prompt, ratings and review counts appear to have decided the answer, and a website alone can't change that.
As general practice rather than a proven recipe: state the name, address, phone and hours the same way everywhere they appear, mark up the business and the people in it, and name the plans you accept in plain text. Those are things worth doing for any practice, whatever the engines do with them.