Treadmills: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

NordicTrack led valid recommendation coverage in October 2026 at 76.7%, ahead of Horizon Fitness at 59.9%, a gap of 16.8 percentage points. The largest coverage increase was Peloton, which rose from 40.9% in July 2026 to 49.8% in October 2026, a gain of 8.9 points beyond normal month-to-month variation. The largest coverage decline was ProForm, which fell from 39.0% in July 2026 to 29.7% in October 2026, a drop of 9.3 points also beyond normal variation.

After a soft September, October carried two significant moves versus the prior month: Life Fitness gained 7.8 points and NordicTrack gained 7.0 points, each beyond normal month-to-month variation. The category leader remained stable across the full series, with NordicTrack moving from 72.2% in July 2026 to 76.7% in October 2026, a gain of 4.5 points that sits within normal variation. Peloton rose for a third consecutive month, the longest active rise streak among the ten tracked brands this period.

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 434 qualified observations in October 2026, after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the number of canonical AI surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. Both months recorded all six families.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Treadmills

Research Scope and Qualification

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design. A single standardized prompt set is submitted each month, then filtered for brand relevance and answer quality before any brand-level figure is calculated.

Brand-level percentages use the qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection. See the AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology for the full qualification process.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which treadmill brands lead the October 2026 AI recommendation standings?
• How do presence, valid recommendation coverage, and top-three rates differ across the ten tracked treadmill brands?
• Which treadmill brand appears most often as the first recommendation?

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned, regardless of recommendation.
• Valid recommendation coverage is the share of qualified observations where the brand appears in a valid recommendation shortlist.
• Top-three rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand appears among the first three recommendations.
• Rank-one rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand is the first recommendation.
• Net sentiment is the balance of positive over negative mentions, from -1.0 to 1.0.

For formulas and denominator rules, see AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions.

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which treadmill brands gained or lost AI recommendation coverage between July and October 2026?
• Why did Peloton's valid recommendation coverage rise across three consecutive months?
• What drove ProForm's recommendation coverage decline beyond normal variation?

Seven of the ten tracked brands gained coverage from July 2026 to October 2026. Two brands recorded a significant prior-month move: Life Fitness rose 7.8 points from September 2026 to October 2026, and NordicTrack rose 7.0 points over the same span, both beyond normal month-to-month variation.

Largest Increase: Peloton

Peloton rose 8.9 points, from 40.9% valid recommendation coverage in July 2026 to 49.8% in October 2026, a gain beyond normal month-to-month variation. It rose in each of the three months since July 2026, climbing from 40.9% in July 2026 to 42.4% in August 2026, 46.2% in September 2026, and 49.8% in October 2026. Presence rate rose from 59.9% in July 2026 to 70.0% in October 2026, a gain of 10.1 points, and top-three rate rose from 15.3% to 21.2%, a gain of 5.9 points. Rank-one rate held near flat, moving from 1.9% in July 2026 to 1.6% in October 2026.

Largest Decline: ProForm

ProForm fell 9.3 points, from 39.0% valid recommendation coverage in July 2026 to 29.7% in October 2026, a decline beyond normal month-to-month variation. Presence rate fell from 56.0% in July 2026 to 46.1% in October 2026, a drop of 9.9 points, and top-three rate fell from 14.2% to 11.5%. The brand declined in each of the two months into September 2026 before a partial recovery of 2.2 points into October 2026 that remains within normal variation.

Category Leader: NordicTrack

NordicTrack remained the coverage leader in October 2026 at 76.7%, up 4.5 points from 72.2% in July 2026, within normal month-to-month variation. Presence rate was 96.1% in October 2026, essentially unchanged from 96.3% in July 2026. Top-three rate rose from 60.6% in July 2026 to 70.5% in October 2026, a gain of 9.9 points, and rank-one rate rose from 48.9% to 56.5%, a gain of 7.6 points.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Why does high AI recommendation coverage not always translate into first-position placement for treadmill brands?
• How do NordicTrack, Horizon Fitness, and Sole Fitness differ between top-three and rank-one recommendation rates?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Peloton's top-three rate of 21.2% is nearly half that of Sole Fitness at 43.3%, despite the two brands sitting within 7 points of each other on coverage. NordicTrack holds a rank-one rate of 56.5%, while Horizon Fitness carries a 44.7% top-three rate but only a 4.2% rank-one rate, and Sole Fitness carries 43.3% top-three against 3.9% rank-one.

Close coverage can still hide very different first-position rates, as the gap between NordicTrack and the next two brands demonstrates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

Questions This Section Answers

• What buyer-intent classes are represented in the treadmill AI recommendation data?
• Does the current benchmark capture pricing or multi-brand comparison questions?

All qualified observations in both July 2026 and October 2026 fell into the Brand Recommendation class.

The current public series measures brand-recommendation discovery only and does not yet contain qualified observations in the pricing or comparison classes.

Historical Measurement Record

Questions This Section Answers

• How has qualified observation volume changed across the July to October 2026 measurement periods?
• Which treadmill brand has led recommendation coverage in every recorded month?
• What were the largest coverage movements recorded in each measurement period?

Evidence and Source Layer

Questions This Section Answers

• What source and citation data does the treadmill benchmark capture at the prompt level?
• Does a cited source prove it caused a treadmill brand recommendation?

The benchmark is built from prompt-level observations that retain the query, AI/search surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and, where exposed, citations or attributable evidence sources. Source presence is evidence about the information environment. It is not automatically proof that the source caused the recommendation.

Scope Boundaries

• The benchmark does not measure market share.
• It does not measure attributable sales or revenue.
• It does not capture every possible AI response, only the standardized prompt set submitted each month.
• It does not measure organic-search ranking.
• It does not measure social mention volume.
• It does not cover private or sponsored channels.
• It does not establish causality from a metric movement alone.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains are cited most often across AI treadmill recommendations?
• Are treadmill brand domains or independent review sites more prominent in AI citations?
• How concentrated are citations across the 1,099 domains observed?

Across all AI platform responses in this measurement period, 6,939 citations were observed across 1,099 unique domains.

Citations are broadly distributed: the ten most-cited domains together account for a minority of the 6,939 total citations, and the remaining volume is spread across roughly 1,089 additional domains. No tracked treadmill brand's own domain appears in the top 10. Independent review and fitness-publication sites dominate the list, with garagegymreviews.com, outdoorgearlab.com, barbend.com, treadmillreviews.net, consumerreports.org, and runnersworld.com together accounting for a substantial share, alongside general platforms such as google.com, youtube.com, and reddit.com and one retailer, dicksportinggoods.com.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index tracks how often and how prominently brands appear in AI-generated recommendations across ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. Each month, a standardized set of prompts is submitted to each surface, and the responses are qualified and scored for brand presence, recommendation coverage, placement, and sentiment.

• AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Research Standards
• Modeled AI Visibility Authority Value

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