A new AI search study just dropped. Health and wellness brands are sitting on a citation advantage, and they may not even realize it.
This week, researchers analyzed over one million citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity, segmented by query intent and industry, to understand which content types are most frequently cited.
What they found: query intent is the strongest predictor of which content types get cited, more so than industry or the specific AI model.
OK, duh. That part isn’t surprising.
What’s more interesting is what happens when you remember what’s unique about the way people search for health and wellness answers. But first, let’s look at the findings overall.
The Pattern Everyone Else Follows
Across all industries and intents, listicles (21.9%), articles (16.7%), and product pages (13.7%) are the most common citation types, accounting for more than half of AI citations. SaaS leans into this hard — listicles account for 35.37% of SaaS citations, driven by comparison-heavy research behavior. Professional services follows a similar pattern.
Side note that’s worth noting: not all listicles are created equal. In professional services, where listicle citation rates are highest, 80.9% of listicle citations came from third-party sources, not self-promotional content.
That distinction is becoming more consequential. I read something from Lily Ray last week that documented sharp organic visibility drops of 30% to 50% concentrated in blog subfolders containing self-promotional “best of” listicles, where the publisher ranked itself first.
This means that the spam-adjacent tactic of ranking yourself first in your own listicals in the name of gaining AI citations is a no-go for SEO, so a friendly reminder not to ignore Google rankings in pursuit of AI visibility as a separate strategy.
Annyyyywayyy…
AI Cites Health and Wellness Differently
Health and wellness invert the broader trend. Articles outpace listicles, reflecting the need for authoritative, educational content in a trust-sensitive sector. The most-cited content types in this vertical are articles (19.66%) and product pages (14.77%).
This makes sense when you think about how people actually search health questions. “What are the symptoms of low cortisol?” is someone searching for information, not a recommendation.
Healthcare is a space where informational queries still make up the majority of searches (even in AI), and for informational queries, articles account for 45.48% of citations,172.7% above the overall average.
This tells me that the health and wellness space is one of the areas where highly credible (often SME-driven) informational content is still getting a ton of visibility, not only in the SERPs but also in AI citations. People asking health questions want a real answer from a credible source. AI models are pulling from content that delivers exactly that.
YMYL content, like health and wellness, has always needed to operate from a higher standard. The stakes of a wrong or vague answer are higher, so the threshold for what gets cited will naturally be higher.
The content types AI models are pulling from in health and wellness are longer-form, educational, and credibility-forward. Articles that explain mechanisms. Content backed by expert perspectives. Pieces that treat the reader as someone who actually wants to understand something, not just get a quick answer and move on.
What This Means in Practice
When I worked with Restore Hyper Wellness, the 154% increase in traffic over 90 days was driven by credible, expert-led informational content — pieces that earned authority fast because there was real expertise behind them.
We were citing a true authority who had led peer-reviewed studies, had authority across the web (cited in credible news, on third-party websites), and had a strong social presence.
This should really be the gold standard when creating content in the health and wellness space.
Showcase your authority. Get the meaty information out of your SME’s head, and distribute it out into the world.
The informational content is the brand earning the right to participate in the conversation through authority, and then readers can be led down the funnel to convert on product/service pages. Informational and product page strategies need to work together and map to the customer journey, supporting each other but also able to live independently.
I’d be interested to hear what other people are seeing here. Are there any other industries where we’re noticing informational content is more important than ever?
Karli Jaenike is the Fractional Organic Content, SEO and AI Search Strategist behind Wild Idea, where she helps growth-stage companies turn deep internal expertise into content that search engines rank and AI systems cite. She has 10+ years across editorial strategy, SEO, and content systems, including leading SEO content at Eventbrite and working with enterprise clients at Siege Media. Her framework, Authority Engineering, surfaces the knowledge already inside a company, structures it for both traditional search and AI discoverability, and uses AI-assisted workflows to produce and distribute it at scale. She writes After the Algorithm, a weekly newsletter on AI search and SEO. Based in Texas, she’s a nature lover, live music fan, and travel enthusiast.
