OTC Medicines,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about otc medicines — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Ibuprofen owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Ibuprofen is the default answer.
Named in 90% of otc medicines answers, typically in position 1.8. Paracetamol follows at 72%, Aspirin at 40%.
Every brand AI names, ranked.
Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ibuprofen | 90% | 1.8 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Paracetamol | 72% | 1.5 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Aspirin | 40% | 2.9 | 0% | — |
| 4 | Well | 23% | 2.6 | 0% | — |
| 5 | Nurofen | 13% | 3.9 | 0% | — |
| 6 | Panadol | 12% | 2.1 | 0% | — |
| 7 | Voltaren | 3% | 1.0 | 20% | 0% |
| 8 | Anadin | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Boots | 2% | 3.0 | 20% | — |
| 10 | Calpol | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Tesco | 2% | 4.0 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Asda | 2% | 5.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Advil | 0% | — | 0% | 0% |
| 14 | Superdrug | 0% | — | 0% | — |
| 15 | Your brand | 0% | — | 60% | — |
The referees of otc medicines.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering otc medicines questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
The citation gap.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Too little read data in this category so far — the weekly runs will fill this in.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ibuprofen | 90% | 1.8 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Paracetamol | 72% | 1.5 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Aspirin | 40% | 2.9 | 0% | — |
| 4 | Well | 23% | 2.6 | 0% | — |
| 5 | Nurofen | 13% | 3.9 | 0% | — |
| 6 | Panadol | 12% | 2.1 | 0% | — |
| 7 | Voltaren | 3% | 1.0 | 20% | 0% |
| 8 | Anadin | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Boots | 2% | 3.0 | 20% | — |
| 10 | Calpol | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Tesco | 2% | 4.0 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Asda | 2% | 5.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Advil | 0% | — | 0% | 0% |
| 14 | Superdrug | 0% | — | 0% | — |
| 15 | Your brand | 0% | — | 60% | — |
All three models agree: Ibuprofen.
A rare consensus — every model puts Ibuprofen first, and their top-five lists overlap 67%. Winning here means winning everywhere at once.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aspirin | 35% | 30% | 55% | 25pp |
| Nurofen | 5% | 30% | 5% | 25pp |
| Paracetamol | 60% | 75% | 80% | 20pp |
| Voltaren | 10% | 0% | 0% | 10pp |
| Well | 25% | 25% | 20% | 5pp |
| Panadol | 10% | 15% | 10% | 5pp |
| Anadin | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
| Asda | 0% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
| Tesco | 0% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
| Boots | 0% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
Nineteen more categories.
Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:25:22 GMT.