Doctor on Demand AI Visibility Market Strategy Report - Online Doctors

Answer Capsule

Doctor on Demand is the most-mentioned online doctor brand in the October 2026 LLM Authority Index benchmark, with a raw mention presence rate of 66.02% across 565 qualified observations. It holds the second-highest valid recommendation coverage in the category at 48.32%, trailing Sesame by just 1.3 points, and it posted the sharpest top-three placement gain of any tracked brand, rising 13.0 points since July 2026. Its clearest weakness is first-position conversion: a 13.98% rank-one rate sits well behind Teladoc Health at 27.96%, meaning Doctor on Demand is shortlisted constantly but chosen first far less often. The clearest opportunity is converting that shortlist presence into rank-one recommendations on the high-intent prompt types where buyers are deciding which online doctor to use.

Who This Report Is For

This report is written for Doctor on Demand's marketing, growth, and brand leadership teams, and for category analysts tracking how AI search and assistant surfaces shape online doctor discovery.

Report Card

Executive Summary

Doctor on Demand enters October 2026 as the most visible brand in the online doctor category and the second-strongest brand by recommendation coverage. It recorded 373 mentions across 565 qualified observations, a raw mention presence rate of 66.02%, the highest in the benchmark. Its valid recommendation coverage of 48.32% trails only Sesame at 49.56%, a gap of 1.3 points.

The brand's defining pattern this month is a separation between presence and placement. Coverage held essentially flat against the July 2026 baseline, moving from 48.4% to 48.3%, a change inside normal month-to-month variation. Placement moved much more: the top-three recommendation rate rose 13.0 points, from 24.7% to 37.7%, and the rank-one rate rose 6.5 points, from 7.5% to 14.0%. Doctor on Demand now appears in a similar share of answers as it did in July, but it is placed higher within them.

The strongest cluster signal sits in the single cluster with qualified data, Best Online Doctors and Top Telehealth Services, where Doctor on Demand recorded 273 valid recommendations and a 37.70% top-three rate. The pricing and comparison clusters returned no qualified observations across the series, so the benchmark cannot yet measure how Doctor on Demand performs when buyers ask about cost, insurance, or head-to-head alternatives.

The strongest platform signal is AI Overviews, where Doctor on Demand posted a 59.04% valid recommendation coverage rate and a 51.20% top-three rate, the highest top-three rate of any brand on that surface. AI Mode followed at 59.26% coverage. The clearest platform gap is ChatGPT, where the brand recorded a 12.20% coverage rate and a 4.88% top-three rate, far below its category position.

Sentiment framing is positive across the board. Doctor on Demand recorded 278 positive mentions, 95 neutral mentions, and zero negative mentions, producing a net sentiment score of 0.7453. No platform in the dataset surfaced a negative framing for the brand.

The central strategic question is not whether Doctor on Demand is visible. It is whether that visibility converts into first-position recommendations at the rate its presence would suggest. On that measure, Teladoc Health is converting far more efficiently.

What Doctor on Demand Is Winning

Questions This Section Answers

• Where does Doctor on Demand hold the strongest position in the online doctor category?
• Which platforms and surfaces drive its best recommendation coverage and placement?

Doctor on Demand holds the highest raw mention presence rate in the benchmark at 66.02%, ahead of Teladoc Health at 65.84% and Sesame at 60.00%. When AI systems discuss online doctors, Doctor on Demand is the brand most likely to appear in the answer at all.

It holds the second-highest valid recommendation coverage in the category at 48.32%, within 1.3 points of the category leader. It also recorded the second-highest valid recommendation count at 273, behind Sesame at 280 and ahead of Teladoc Health at 257.

The brand posted the largest top-three rate gain of any tracked brand, rising 13.0 points from 24.7% in July 2026 to 37.7% in October 2026. That move came without a matching rise in raw presence, which eased slightly from 68.8% to 66.0%, indicating the placement gain came from being positioned higher within answers rather than from being mentioned more often.

Doctor on Demand owns the strongest AI Overviews position in the category. Its 51.20% top-three rate on that surface is the highest of any brand, and its 59.04% coverage rate on AI Overviews is the highest single-platform coverage figure recorded for the brand. It also leads on AI Mode with a 59.26% coverage rate.

The brand carries zero negative mentions across 373 recorded mentions, and its domain, doctorondemand.com, is the single most-cited domain across all AI platform responses in October 2026, with 324 citations across 1,532 unique domains.

Where Doctor on Demand Has the Clearest AI Visibility Gaps

Questions This Section Answers

• Why is Doctor on Demand's rank-one rate so far behind Teladoc Health despite similar coverage?
• Why is ChatGPT a weak surface for Doctor on Demand compared with its category-wide standing?
• Which buyer clusters remain unmeasured for Doctor on Demand in this benchmark?

The clearest gap is first-position conversion. Doctor on Demand's rank-one rate of 13.98% is less than half of Teladoc Health's 27.96%, despite Doctor on Demand holding a higher raw mention presence rate and a higher valid recommendation coverage rate. Doctor on Demand is shortlisted more often than Teladoc Health in absolute terms, with 273 valid recommendations against 257, but it is chosen first roughly half as often.

That pattern shows up in the placement comparison directly. Doctor on Demand's 48.32% coverage carries a 13.98% rank-one rate, while Teladoc Health's 45.49% coverage carries a 27.96% rank-one rate. Two brands with similar coverage rates are producing very different first-position outcomes.

The second gap is platform concentration. Doctor on Demand's ChatGPT performance is far below its category standing. On ChatGPT it recorded a 12.20% valid recommendation coverage rate and a 4.88% top-three rate, against a 48.32% category-wide coverage rate. Teladoc Health recorded 53.66% coverage and a 51.22% top-three rate on the same surface. Doctor on Demand's AI Overviews and AI Mode strength is not carrying over to ChatGPT.

The third gap is cluster coverage. All 565 qualified observations fell into the Brand Recommendation cluster. The Pricing and Value cluster and the Multi-Brand Comparison cluster returned zero qualified observations across the entire series. Doctor on Demand's position when buyers ask about cost, insurance, subscription value, or direct brand comparisons is unmeasured in this benchmark.

Biggest Opportunity

Questions This Section Answers

• Where can Doctor on Demand convert shortlist presence into first-position recommendations?
• Which decision-stage prompts are producing named options rather than a first choice for Doctor on Demand?

The single clearest opportunity is converting shortlist presence into first-position recommendations on the high-intent prompt types where buyers are deciding which online doctor to use. Doctor on Demand already appears in roughly two-thirds of relevant answers and earns a valid recommendation in nearly half of them. The gap is not reach. It is the final selection step.

The prompt evidence points to where that step happens. Prompts such as "What is the best online doctor website?" and "What is the best online prescription website?" are decision-stage questions where the answer format rewards a single named first choice. Doctor on Demand's 13.98% rank-one rate suggests it is frequently named as an option but less frequently named as the answer. Closing even part of the 14-point rank-one gap to Teladoc Health would move Doctor on Demand from the most-mentioned brand in the category to the most-recommended one.

Competitive Landscape

Questions This Section Answers

• How do the top online doctor brands compare on top-three rate, rank-one rate, and sentiment?
• Where does Doctor on Demand sit relative to Sesame and Teladoc Health in the recommendation race?

Sesame and Doctor on Demand hold the strongest recommendation-stage positions in the online doctor category, separated by 1.3 points on coverage, while Teladoc Health holds the strongest placement position despite ranking third on coverage. Doctor on Demand sits second on coverage and third on top-three rate, with its rank-one rate well behind the category leader on that measure.

Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only.

Doctor on Demand's row shows a brand with strong shortlist presence and moderate first-position conversion. Its 37.70% top-three rate is second in the category, but its 13.98% rank-one rate is less than half of Teladoc Health's and only marginally ahead of Sesame's 12.92%. Its average recommended rank of 2.31 sits between Teladoc Health at 1.60 and Sesame at 2.43.

Prompt Evidence

Questions This Section Answers

• What prompt-level outcomes explain Doctor on Demand's platform strengths and weaknesses?
• Which platforms produced Doctor on Demand's strongest and weakest recommendation results in specific prompts?

AI Overviews / Best Online Doctors and Top Telehealth Services Prompt: "What is the best online doctor website?" Result: Doctor on Demand recorded its strongest surface-level coverage on AI Overviews at 59.04%, with a 51.20% top-three rate, the highest of any brand on that surface.

ChatGPT / Best Online Doctors and Top Telehealth Services Prompt: "online doctor visit" Result: Doctor on Demand recorded a 12.20% coverage rate and a 4.88% top-three rate on ChatGPT, far below its category-wide position, while Teladoc Health recorded 53.66% coverage on the same surface.

AI Mode / Best Online Doctors and Top Telehealth Services Prompt: "What is the best online prescription website?" Result: Doctor on Demand posted a 59.26% coverage rate and a 50.00% top-three rate on AI Mode, its strongest coverage reading across all tracked platforms.

Perplexity / Best Online Doctors and Top Telehealth Services Prompt: "How to get a doctor's note for work without seeing a doctor?" Result: Doctor on Demand recorded a 41.18% coverage rate and a 32.35% top-three rate on Perplexity, with a 17.65% rank-one rate, its second-strongest rank-one surface.

What CiteWorks Studio Would Do Next

Phase 1: AI Visibility Market Discovery Audit Map exactly which prompts, surfaces, and competitor answers are producing Doctor on Demand shortlists without first-position selection, starting with the ChatGPT gap and the decision-stage prompt types.

Phase 2: Recommendation Readiness Plan Prioritize the prompt and page changes most likely to convert existing shortlist presence into rank-one recommendations, focused on the "best online doctor" and "best online prescription" question formats.

Phase 3: Owned Answer Layer Buildout Strengthen the owned pages that AI systems retrieve when forming direct recommendations, so the brand's differentiators are extractable in the answer format these surfaces use.

Phase 4: Citation and Authority Layer Development Build the third-party and comparison-source footprint that supports first-position framing, since doctorondemand.com already leads all cited domains and the surrounding evidence layer is where selection framing is reinforced.

Phase 5: Monthly AI Visibility and Recommendation Tracking Track coverage, top-three rate, rank-one rate, and sentiment by platform and cluster each month, with the rank-one rate as the primary conversion metric.

Why This Matters

Questions This Section Answers

• What is the commercial consequence of Doctor on Demand winning visibility but losing first-position selection?
• Why is presence alone not enough to decide buyer behavior for online doctor recommendations?

Doctor on Demand is winning the visibility contest and losing part of the selection contest. It is the most-mentioned brand in the category, it holds the second-highest recommendation coverage, and it carries zero negative framing. None of that changes the fact that when an AI system names a single first choice, Teladoc Health is named roughly twice as often.

Presence alone does not decide buyer behavior. A brand that appears in two-thirds of answers but is chosen first in one-seventh of them is spending its visibility on shortlist slots rather than on the recommendation that ends the search. The next move is targeted correction of the prompt, page, and citation layers that shape first-position framing, not broader visibility work.

Core Metrics

Sentiment Score

Sentiment Score = (positive mentions x 1 + neutral mentions x 0 + negative mentions x -1) / total mentions

For Doctor on Demand in October 2026: (278 x 1 + 95 x 0 + 0 x -1) / 373 = 0.7453.

This matters because unclassified mention counts are misleading. A brand can appear in hundreds of answers and still lose the buyer decision if most of those appearances are neutral references rather than positive recommendations. Share of voice is a diagnostic metric, not a business KPI. A positive recommendation, a neutral reference, a cautionary mention, and a competitor-displaced mention are not equal, and counting all mentions as wins is bad measurement. Classified sentiment is required before interpreting AI visibility, because it separates framing quality from raw presence.

Doctor on Demand's 0.7453 score reflects a framing profile that is strongly positive and entirely free of negative mentions. Roughly three-quarters of its mentions carry positive framing, and the remaining quarter are neutral references. That is a healthy framing position, but it does not by itself explain why first-position conversion lags Teladoc Health, which carries a slightly lower sentiment score of 0.7419 but nearly double the rank-one rate. Framing quality and placement are separate signals.

Sentiment by Platform

Questions This Section Answers

• Which platforms show the strongest positive framing for Doctor on Demand?
• Where does Doctor on Demand appear as context rather than a recommendation?

Methodology

1. This report is benchmark-based analysis of the LLM Authority Index Online Doctors AI Visibility Market Discovery Index for October 2026, interpreted by CiteWorks Studio. It is not a client implementation result.
2. The reporting window is October 2026, with July 2026 as the baseline comparison month and August and September 2026 as intermediate readings.
3. Six AI search and assistant surface families were tracked: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. All six were represented in the qualified observation set.
4. Each monthly benchmark run began with 800 prompt-surface observations. October 2026 produced 603 unique questions, 674 relevant responses, 126 irrelevant responses, and 565 qualified observations after both qualification stages.
5. Ten brands were tracked: Amwell, Doctor on Demand, HealthTap, K Health, Lemonaid Health, LiveHealth Online, MDLive, plushcare, Sesame, and Teladoc Health. PlushCare and plushcare are tracked as separate brand entries in this benchmark.
6. Three public high-intent clusters were defined: Best Online Doctors and Top Telehealth Services (consideration), Online Doctor Comparisons and Alternatives (evaluation), and Online Doctor Pricing, Cost and Insurance (decision). Only the first cluster returned qualified observations in October 2026.
7. Stage 0 extraction retains the query, AI or search surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and, where exposed, citations or attributable evidence sources.
8. A mention is counted when a tracked brand appears in a qualified AI response, regardless of whether it is recommended. Raw mention presence rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned at all.
9. A valid recommendation is counted when the dataset explicitly marks the brand as a recommended option. Negative, neutral, cautionary, comparison-anchor, and listed-only mentions are not counted as valid recommendations.
10. Brand-level percentages use the 565 qualified observations as the public denominator, not the 800-prompt raw collection.
11. Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only, meaning positive valid recommendations with a rank between 1 and 10.
12. Limitations: the benchmark does not measure market share, attributable sales, every possible AI response, organic-search ranking, social mention volume, private or sponsored channels, or causality from a metric movement alone. The pricing and comparison clusters returned no qualified observations, so commercial and head-to-head questions remain unmeasured. The PlushCare and plushcare identifier split affects one tracked brand's series and does not affect Doctor on Demand's metrics.

See How AI Is Recommending Your Brand

The public benchmark shows where Doctor on Demand is winning and losing recommendation credit across AI surfaces. A company-level AI visibility audit maps the specific prompts, platforms, competitors, and evidence sources behind those outcomes, and identifies which levers move a brand from shortlist presence to first-position recommendation.