YouTube Is the Most-Cited Source in Google AI Overviews for Vitamin and Supplement Queries

Key takeaways

• YouTube was the most frequently cited website, appearing in 186 AI Overviews and across 44 of the 50 queries.
• GoodRx was its closest competitor, appearing in 48.3% of answers. Healthline followed at 28.6%.
• Only 32.4% of cited pages also appeared in the organic results recorded for the same search.
• AI Overviews appeared in every search we tracked, while the websites they cited kept changing.

YouTube takes the lead in vitamin and supplement searches

YouTube was the only website cited in more than half of the AI Overviews we collected. It appeared almost twice as often as Healthline and reached 88% of the queries at least once during the week.

That reach is what makes the result interesting. YouTube appeared across a broad mix of supplement questions, giving the platform a presence that extended well beyond one topic or one day.

GoodRx was a strong second, with 169 appearances. Healthline appeared in 100 answers, Cleveland Clinic in 98, and the NIH domain in 88. YouTube also led in total citation occurrences: 526, compared with 399 for GoodRx.

A typical answer linked to about eight pages from seven websites. That puts YouTube alongside established health information sources in the same discovery channel.

For a supplement brand, the practical next step is to look at the videos Google cites for your topics. Which questions do they answer? Who presents the information? Where does your own content cover the same ground, and where are there gaps? The citation list gives you a concrete starting point for that review.

GoodRx keeps the race close

YouTube finished the week in first place, but GoodRx stayed close. YouTube led outright on three days, the two tied on two days, and GoodRx led on the remaining two.

The biggest gap came on September 3: YouTube appeared in 29 answers, compared with 19 for GoodRx. Two days later, GoodRx was narrowly ahead, 25 to 24.

This is why a single visibility check can be misleading for a marketing team. Depending on the day, you could come away with a different view of who leads your category. Tracking the same questions over time helps you see which competitors keep returning and how often your own brand joins them.

Broad vitamin searches are YouTube’s strongest territory

YouTube’s presence was especially strong for searches beginning with “vitamins for.” It appeared in 78.6% of those answers, covering questions about hair growth, energy, immunity, children and other everyday concerns.

The picture shifted across the other query groups. GoodRx led for “best vitamins for” and “supplements to help with,” while YouTube led for “best supplements for” and “supplements for.”

For content planning, that makes the full question worth paying attention to. “Vitamins for hair growth,” “best vitamins for women over 50” and “supplements to help with brain fog” belong to the same broad market, but each gives you a different set of sources to investigate.

Build your monitoring around the questions your customers actually ask. Then use the cited pages and videos to understand what information is already visible for each one. A broad category ranking is useful; the query-level detail is where it starts to become a content brief.

Organic rankings show only part of the AI visibility picture

Your ranking report can tell you where a page appears in ordinary search results. It can still miss a large part of the source list inside an AI Overview.

Only 32.4% of the cited pages also appeared in the organic results we recorded for the same search. The other 67.6% were outside that recorded list.

When we compared websites rather than individual pages, the overlap rose to 52.5%. Google could cite one article in its AI Overview while showing another page from the same website in the organic results.

For marketers, the implication is straightforward: track your AI citations alongside your organic positions. Look at the specific page that earns the citation, the question it appears for, and how often it returns. That gives you a much clearer picture of which parts of your content are being surfaced.

An AI citation is a place you have to keep earning

Every query in our panel produced an AI Overview on every day. The feature was consistent; its reading list was far more fluid.

Across neighboring days, an average of 48.5% of the distinct pages seen over the two days appeared on both. Websites were a little steadier, with 53.3% appearing on both days. The chart shows how much of each combined source list appeared on only one day.

The most changeable query was “supplements for weight loss.” NIH appeared every day, and YouTube appeared on six of seven days, while other websites moved in and out of the answer.

Some searches were much more settled. “Supplements to help with glp-1 side effects” returned the same cited pages all week. Even within supplements, different questions had very different visibility patterns.

A citation today is a useful signal. Seeing it return throughout the month would tell you more about your ongoing presence. For your reporting, follow both: the questions where you have appeared and the ones where you appear consistently.

The questions came straight from Google’s suggestion box

We started with Google Autocomplete: ten suggestions under each of five phrases, giving us 50 searches to follow. The screenshots below show the suggestions we captured on August 29.

The mix is useful for a content team. People’s questions are framed around things they want help with—hair growth, energy, sleep, weight management—and around specific audiences, such as children or women over 50. These were the queries behind the results above.

Explore these search queries

1. vitamins for hair growth
2. vitamins for immune system
3. vitamins for hair growth and thickness
4. vitamins for bones and joints
5. vitamins for growth height for teenager
6. vitamins for energy
7. vitamins for brain
8. vitamins for women
9. vitamins for kids
10. vitamins for hair loss

Explore these search queries

1. best vitamins for hair growth
2. best vitamins for women over 40
3. best vitamins for women over 50
4. best vitamins for men
5. best vitamins for hair growth and thickness
6. best vitamins for high blood pressure
7. best vitamins for sleep and anxiety
8. best vitamins for women
9. best vitamins for kids
10. best vitamins for kids immune system

Explore these search queries

1. best supplements for weight loss
2. best supplements for testosterone
3. best supplements for glowing skin and anti aging
4. best supplements for joint pain and stiffness
5. best supplements for weight loss female
6. best supplements for hair growth
7. best supplements for bloating and weight loss
8. best supplements for men
9. best supplements for high blood pressure
10. best supplements for belly fat loss female

Explore these search queries

1. supplements to help with weight loss
2. supplements to help with prednisone withdrawal
3. supplements to help with brain fog
4. supplements to help with insulin resistance
5. supplements to help with joint pain
6. supplements to help with glp-1 side effects
7. supplements to help with anxiety
8. supplements to help with hair loss
9. supplements to help with hot flashes
10. supplements to help with high blood pressure

Explore these search queries

1. supplements for adhd
2. supplements for joints
3. supplements for insulin resistance
4. supplements for testosterone
5. supplements for hair growth
6. supplements for weight loss
7. supplements for weight gain
8. supplements for anxiety
9. supplements for perimenopause
10. supplements for energy

You can use the same approach to build a starting list for your own category. Explore the suggestions around your products and customer questions, then check which sources appear in the AI Overviews for those searches.

What vitamin and supplement brands can do next

Bring YouTube into your content research

YouTube’s reach makes its cited videos worth studying. Start with the videos that appear for questions relevant to your brand. Review their topics, explanations and presenters, and use that review to identify questions your team could answer well. Treat video as a format to evaluate within your content plan.

Plan around customer questions

The difference between query groups shows why a single broad keyword is not enough to describe your visibility. Group your customers’ questions by need, audience and topic. Track the sources that appear for each group, then decide where a useful guide, comparison or explanation could strengthen your coverage.

Make citation tracking part of regular reporting

Record which pages and websites appear in AI answers, how often they return, and how that compares with your organic rankings. This gives your team a way to recognize sustained visibility and spot topics where other sources are becoming more prominent.

Searcherries helps you monitor brand mentions, competitors and citations across AI search platforms. Use that view to connect the questions that matter to your business with the content and sources showing up in the answers.

YouTube’s lead gives supplement marketers a clear reason to look beyond their usual list of competing websites. Start with the questions your customers ask, inspect the answers they receive, and make those findings part of your next content plan.

How we did the research

Searcherries monitored 50 vitamin and supplement queries from Google Autocomplete once a day from August 30 to September 5, 2026. We used SerpApi to collect US English desktop results configured for New York, with personalization and caching disabled. The same queries were used throughout, producing 350 valid searches, all with an AI Overview, and 5,036 citation occurrences across 572 pages and 218 websites.

We ranked websites by the number of AI Overviews citing them, counting each website once per answer. Organic overlap compares cited pages and websites with the results returned for the same search. Daily source comparisons measure how much of the combined list from two neighboring days appears on both.

The findings describe this query panel and search configuration. Organic results contained seven to ten returned links per search, and one AI Overview had no extracted citations; excluding that observation barely changed the source-stability result. The analysis measures source visibility, rather than the medical accuracy of the content.