Vitamins and Dietary Supplements: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Who led the vitamins and dietary supplements benchmark in October 2026, and by how much?
• Which supplement brands moved beyond normal month-to-month variation?

Thorne led the Vitamins and Dietary Supplements benchmark in October 2026 with valid recommendation coverage of 92.3%, up from 90.8% in August 2026. Pure Encapsulations followed at 77.9%, a gap of 14.4 points. NOW Foods recorded the largest coverage increase, rising to 55.6% in October 2026 from 48.8% in August 2026. Nordic Naturals recorded the largest coverage decline, falling to 28.4% in October 2026 from 38.9% in August 2026.

October 2026 was a month of mixed movement across the three-month series. NOW Foods rose beyond normal month-to-month variation, while Garden of Life, Nordic Naturals, and Ritual each declined beyond normal variation. Thorne's baseline-to-current coverage changed only modestly, but its most recent month-over-month move was itself beyond normal variation, rising from 88.8% in September 2026 to 92.3% in October 2026. In the mid-tier, Nature Made held near its baseline (79.1% in October 2026 versus 78.8% in August 2026), and Pure Encapsulations edged higher (77.9% in October 2026 versus 74.3% in August 2026).

The benchmark began with 800 prompt-surface observations in each month and produced 757 qualified observations in October 2026 after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the canonical AI/search surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. All six families were represented in both months.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Vitamins and Dietary Supplements

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• How many prompt observations qualified for the October 2026 benchmark after filtering?
• Why are brand-level percentages calculated on the qualified subset rather than the raw collection?

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design. In both months the benchmark drew from 800 source prompt-surface observations and retained a qualified subset after filtering for relevance and eligibility.

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

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• Which supplement brands rank highest by valid recommendation coverage?
• How do presence, top-three, and rank-one rates differ across the tracked brands?

Standings for October 2026, sorted by valid recommendation coverage.

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: Share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned in any way.
• Valid recommendation coverage: Share of qualified observations where the brand appears in a valid recommendation shortlist.
• Top-three rate: Share of qualified observations where the brand appears among the top three recommended options.
• Rank-one rate: Share of qualified observations where the brand is the first recommendation.
• Net sentiment: Positive mentions minus negative mentions as a share of all mentions, on a scale from -1 to 1.

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

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which supplement brand recorded the largest coverage increase since baseline?
• Why did Nordic Naturals decline so sharply across the three-month series?
• What widened the gap between NOW Foods and Nordic Naturals?

Largest Increase: NOW Foods

NOW Foods rose to 55.6% in October 2026 from 48.8% in August 2026, an increase of 6.8 percentage points, with gains in each of the two months since baseline. Presence rate also rose to 59.3% from 54.1%. Top-three rate rose to 17.4% from 10.1%, and rank-one rate rose to 1.5% from 0.1%. The increase in coverage was accompanied by higher placement rates.

Largest Decline: Nordic Naturals

Nordic Naturals fell to 28.4% in October 2026 from 38.9% in August 2026, a drop of 10.5 percentage points, declining in each of the two months since baseline. Presence rate declined to 30.9% from 41.8%. The decline was itself beyond normal month-to-month variation: coverage was 34.1% in September 2026 before falling further in October 2026. The gap between Nordic Naturals and NOW Foods widened from 9.9 points at baseline to 27.2 points in October 2026.

Category Leader: Thorne

Thorne remained the coverage leader in October 2026 at 92.3%, up 1.5 points from 90.8% in August 2026 on a baseline-to-current basis. The more recent month-over-month move was itself beyond normal variation: coverage rose from 88.8% in September 2026 to 92.3% in October 2026, reversing a one-month dip. Top-three rate rose to 80.9% from 62.1%, and rank-one rate held near 47.8% from 46.0%. Thorne's top-three rate remains far above the next closest brand.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• How can two brands with similar top-three rates end up with very different rank-one rates?

Coverage shows how often a brand appears in a recommendation, but not how prominently. Nature Made and Pure Encapsulations both show top-three rates above 50%, yet Nature Made's rank-one rate is more than double Pure Encapsulations', showing how similar coverage can still hide different first-position rates.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

Questions This Section Answers

• What kinds of buyer questions does this benchmark currently measure?
• Which buyer-intent classes have no qualified observations yet?

All qualified observations in both months fell into the brand recommendation class, which captures shoppers seeking product or brand suggestions.

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

Historical Measurement Record

New measurements are added to the same benchmark report.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains do AI platforms cite most often for supplement recommendations?
• How concentrated are citations among the top domains?
• Do any supplement brands' own domains appear among the most-cited sources?

Across all AI platform responses in October 2026, 7,114 citations were observed across 1,136 unique domains.

Citation share is concentrated at the top: the ten most-cited domains account for a combined 29.4% of all citations, while the remaining 1,126 unique domains share the rest. No tracked brand's own domain appears in the top 10. Health and medical information sites, including healthline.com, consumerlab.com, and medicalnewstoday.com, dominate the list, with search and retail platforms (google.com, amazon.com) and community or media sources (reddit.com, youtube.com, fortune.com) also present. AI recommendations in this category draw heavily on independent health information and supplement review sources rather than brand-owned content.

Evidence and Source Layer

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 shows whether an AI answer points to a named source for its recommendation. It is not automatically proof that the source caused the recommendation, and the benchmark does not assert causation from the data alone.

Scope Boundaries

• This public benchmark does not measure market share, sales, or attributable conversions.
• It does not capture every possible AI response.
• It does not measure organic-search ranking or social mention volume.
• Private and sponsored channels are excluded from observation.
• A movement in any single metric does not by itself establish why that change occurred; it records the change.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index is a monthly, neutral industry benchmark tracking how often brands appear in AI-generated recommendations across six canonical AI/search surface families. The index measures presence, valid recommendation coverage, recommendation placement, and sentiment as distinct signals, treating each on its own terms. The public index reports category-level standings only, based on qualified observations with a documented funnel.

• 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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