Supplements now a health category of its own, according to analysis of searches on health websites

Tap Native, a native advertising and content marketing firm, has released the results of a recent health topics that American consumers have been searching for on the Internet.  The company says the data was assembled by looking at visits to health and medical content pages across dozens of websites.

The company says data was assembled from more than 2.2 million unique URLs across the top 100 largest health websites in its network.

‘Dietary supplements & vitamins’ warrants its own category

The company says ti then homogenized the searches and placed them into broad therapeutic categories.  Some of the top searches results are relevant to dietary supplement firms in general (‘weight loss’ and ‘stress & anxiety’ for example).  But the big win for the industry is that there were enough consumers seeking information on dietary supplements and vitamins specifically in 2021 to warrant its own category.

The top 20 health topics according to Tap Native’s data are:

1. Weight loss, popular diets, burning fat, diet recipes

2. Covid-19, Covid vaccine, immunization, Coronavirus risks, boosters

3. Depression

4. Hypertension

5. Mental health including anger, stress & anxiety, sleep disorders

6. Diabetes, lowering blood sugar

7. Beauty topics, skin health, hair loss

8. Lowering cholesterol, statins, heart disease

9. At home workouts, fitness, exercises

10. Arthritis, carpel tunnel

11. Alcohol/tobacco/drug use and cessation

12. Relaxation techniques, meditation, yoga

13. Respiratory illnesses, COPD, asthma, bronchitis

14. Alzheimer's, dementia diagnosis & care

15. Digestive, gut health, Crohn's Disease/Ulcerative Colitis

16. Cancer types, diagnosis & treatments

 17. Dietary supplements & vitamins

18. Chronic kidney disease (CKD)

19. Stroke, TIA, blood clot, prevention

20. Epilepsy

CRN survey data supports results

The data supports other market research relevant to the industry.  The Council for Responsible Nutrition has surveyed the use of dietary supplements in the market for more than two decades. The group’s most recent survey​​, released in mid October, showed that now more than 80% of US consumers are now using dietary supplements, an increase of 7% from 2020.

CRN surveyed the top five reasons consumers gave for using supplements, some of which overlap with Tap Native’s top search results. According to CRN these reasons are overall health and wellness, immune health, energy,  filling nutrient gaps and hair, skin & nails. 

NutraIngredients-USA data provides points of intersection

In addition, in a survey  of 280 industry professionals conducted by NutraIngredients-USA found 62% of respondents reported surging interest and sales in supplements in 2020.

That survey also found that while immune health supplements were the clear winners, 72% of respondents said interest was also up in products marketed for ‘stress management,’ another point of intersection with the Tap Native data​​.