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Who Google's AI recommends when Indians shop for skincare and supplements

We asked Google 44 real buying questions and recorded every brand its AI Overview named. A handful of brands are recommended relentlessly. Most are never mentioned at all — including some of the largest names in the country.

Published 17 September 2026 44 questions 79 brands tracked India · Google AI Overviews

When someone searches for skincare or supplements now, Google increasingly answers the question itself — an AI Overview above the results, naming specific products. For a shopper that is convenient. For a brand it is a new shelf, and nobody has published who is on it.

So we measured it. 44 buying questions, run through Google in India, every named brand recorded. The findings are reproducible: search any question below and count for yourself.

44
of the 79 brands we tracked were named in zero answers — not once across 44 questions.

Skincare: one brand answers almost everything

Across 23 skincare questions, Minimalist was named in 19 of them — 83%. No other brand comes close, and 26 of the 44 skincare brands we tracked never appeared at all.

BrandNamed in Share
Minimalist19/23
83%
The Derma Co13/23
57%
Plum10/23
43%
The Ordinaryglobal5/23
22%
Deconstruct4/23
17%
Dr. Sheth's4/23
17%
Dot & Key4/23
17%
Simpleglobal3/23
13%
Pilgrim2/23
9%
Re'Equil2/23
9%
Foxtale2/23
9%
Cetaphilglobal2/23
9%

Supplements: more open, but still concentrated

MuscleBlaze led with 9 of 21 (43%). 18 of 35 tracked supplement brands were never named.

BrandNamed in Share
MuscleBlaze9/21
43%
Carbamide Forte6/21
29%
Optimum Nutritionglobal5/21
24%
Nakpro4/21
19%
GNCglobal3/21
14%
Wellbeing Nutrition3/21
14%
AS-IT-IS Nutrition2/21
10%
Fast&Up2/21
10%
OZiva2/21
10%
Dymatizeglobal2/21
10%
Avvatar1/21
5%
MyProteinglobal1/21
5%

The thing everyone assumes, which our data does not support

Every AI Overview cites its sources. The prevailing advice — sold by AEO and GEO agencies at ₹25,000 to ₹3,50,000 a month — is that you publish content, Google cites your site, and Google then recommends you.

We expected to confirm that. We could not.

BrandOwn domainCited Recommended in
Plumplumgoodness.com12x10/23
Deconstructthedeconstruct.in8x4/23
The Derma Cothedermaco.com5x13/23
Pilgrimdiscoverpilgrim.com4x2/23
Wellbeing Nutritionwellbeingnutrition.com9x3/21
Nutrabaynutrabay.com7x1/21
HealthyHeyhealthyhey.com5x0/21
Being cited as a source and being recommended as a product are close to independent. The most-recommended skincare brand in our scan had its own site cited once. One supplement brand was cited five times and recommended zero times.
We are not claiming the opposite either. We ran 44 questions on one day, on one surface. That is enough to say the simple story does not hold in this data. It is not enough to say what does drive a recommendation — and we would rather tell you that than sell you a theory.

What the numbers do support is narrower and, we think, more useful: a small number of brands are recommended relentlessly, most are never mentioned, and almost no brand in either category appears to know which group it is in.

Skincare — most cited sources

DomainCitations
google.com39
youtube.com21
amazon.in15
plumgoodness.comPlum's own site12
thedeconstruct.inDeconstruct's own site8
nykaa.com8
reddit.com7
flipkart.com6
thedermaco.comThe Derma Co's own site5
instagram.com4

Supplements — most cited sources

DomainCitations
amazon.in37
healthkart.com21
1mg.com15
youtube.com15
wellbeingnutrition.comWellbeing Nutrition's own site9
nutrabay.comNutrabay's own site7
instagram.com7
reddit.com5
guardian.in5
healthyhey.comHealthyHey's own site5

What we are not saying

  • This is one surface, on one day. Google AI Overviews change. A brand absent today may appear next month, and the reverse.
  • Not being named is not the same as not selling. Several invisible brands are large and successful. This measures one channel, not a business.
  • Answers vary. AI Overviews are not deterministic and differ by user and session. We ran each question once; treat single results as indicative.
  • Correlation, not proof. Cited brands tend to have their own sites cited. We have not proven that publishing content causes the recommendation.
  • We have not named the invisible brands. If you want to know whether yours is among them, we will tell you privately.

Method

  • 44 buying questions, weighted toward "best X for Y" phrasing, which is what triggers product recommendations. Advice questions rarely name any brand.
  • Run through Google with India as the region, AI Overview captured in full including the shopping carousel, sources recorded.
  • Brands matched on exact name with word boundaries. Every answer archived.
  • 79 brands tracked across both categories.

Is your brand on the invisible list?

We will run your brand against every buying question in your category, show you exactly which competitors Google recommends instead of you, and give you the full archived answers so you can verify every line.

What we will not do is promise to fix it. We have not established what causes a recommendation, and anyone who tells you they have should be asked for their data.

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