Executive summary
Three platforms capture nearly two-thirds of the non-branded organic search value earned by 10 leading mental health platforms. Across the 10 platforms we analyzed, Talkspace, LifeStance and BetterHelp together earn an estimated $3.68 million of the $5.68 million in monthly non-branded search value: 65% of the total.
The gap between leaders and the rest of the field is wide, and it is not explained by funding or brand recognition alone. Key findings:
- Search value is concentrated. The top three platforms each earn more than $1.1 million a month in estimated non-branded search value. Five of the 10 earn less than $250,000.
- The fastest movers are gaining ground. LifeStance and Headway each more than doubled their non-branded search value year over year (estimated +166% and +154%).
- Brand dependency is a hidden risk. Thriveworks earns 90% of its search value from people who have not yet chosen a provider. Three other platforms depend on searches for their own name for roughly three-quarters or more of their value.
- Efficiency beats size. Rula generates roughly four times the non-branded value of a peer with the same authority score. Ellie Mental Health, with the lowest authority score in the study, out-earns a venture-funded national platform.
- AI answers favor the leaders. BetterHelp and Talkspace account for 60% of the Google AI Overview citations we tracked across the 10 platforms.
- Directories own the starting line. On the category’s highest-volume care searches, directories and local practices hold 60 of 100 first-page positions. The 10 platforms hold 15.
For growth-stage health companies, the message is clear. Expanding into new markets does not automatically create search visibility in them. The companies winning new patients have built authority, rankings and content for patients who don’t yet know which brand they want.
Why search decides growth in behavioral health
Most people looking for mental health care start with a question, not a brand. They search "therapist who takes Aetna," "online therapy for anxiety" or "psychiatrist near me." Increasingly, they read an AI-generated answer before they click anything.
Three forces make search especially decisive in this category:
- Insurance drives the decision. Patients filter by what their plan covers, so payer-specific searches carry high commercial intent.
- Comparison is built in. Patients compare platforms on cost, wait times and coverage before they commit, and the pages that answer those questions win the click.
- AI answers are becoming the first impression. Google’s AI Overviews and assistants like ChatGPT now summarize options directly, citing a short list of sources. Platforms that aren’t cited are increasingly invisible.
For companies expanding nationally, the stakes rise with every new market. A platform can be licensed in all 50 states and still be absent from the searches patients in those states actually run.
How we conducted this study
We analyzed 10 platforms that compete for the same patients, the same search results, or both. Each is measured on Webolutions’ four-stage framework: Authority Capacity, Ranking Strength, Search-Market Value (non-branded Organic Search Value, in dollars) and AI Visibility. Data comes from Semrush for October 2026 and October 2025. The full methodology, including why our competitor list may differ from yours, appears at the end of this report.
At a glance
Source: Semrush, US database, October 2026. Ties share a rank. Platforms are named where their results are positive.
BetterHelp, Talkspace, LifeStance and Headway rank in the top half of the field at every stage of the framework. Below them, strength at one stage rarely carries through to the next, and that break is where search value is lost.
Finding 1: Authority Capacity — the leaders have built deep foundations
BetterHelp and Talkspace hold the strongest backlink profiles in the category, with Authority Scores of 65 and 63. BetterHelp alone draws links from more than 37,000 referring domains.
| Platform | Authority Score | Referring domains |
| BetterHelp | 65 | 37,607 |
| Talkspace | 63 | 26,531 |
| Thriveworks | 54 | 17,302 |
| LifeStance | 53 | 18,123 |
| Headway | 48 | 24,012 |
The other five platforms score between 42 and 48. The weakest link profile in the study, belonging to a venture-backed hybrid therapy platform, has fewer than 5,000 referring domains: about one-eighth of the leader’s.
Authority is the raw material for rankings, but it is not destiny. As Finding 4 shows, several platforms with modest authority convert it into value far more efficiently than their peers.
Finding 2: Ranking Strength — LifeStance leads the top three positions
LifeStance ranks in Google’s top three positions for more than 12,000 keywords, the most of any platform in the study. Its network of clinic locations and provider pages gives it broad local and condition-specific coverage.
| Platform | Keywords in positions 1–3 | Keywords in positions 4–10 |
| LifeStance | 12,271 | 26,985 |
| BetterHelp | 7,705 | 28,919 |
| Talkspace | 7,423 | 18,557 |
| Headway | 3,868 | 9,736 |
| Thriveworks | 3,252 | 9,513 |
The gap below the leaders is steep. Two platforms in the study rank in the top three for fewer than 1,000 keywords each, less than one-twelfth of LifeStance’s total. Both are insurance-based platforms with national clinician networks, which shows that a broad care footprint does not automatically produce a broad search footprint.
Finding 3: Search-Market Value — three platforms earn 65% of the value
Talkspace, LifeStance and BetterHelp each earn more than $1.1 million a month in estimated non-branded search value. Together they hold 65% of the $5.68 million earned across all 10 platforms.
Source: Semrush, US database, October 2026. Estimated monthly ad-equivalent value of non-branded organic traffic. Platform letters match the At a glance chart.
Thriveworks follows at about $781,000 and Headway at about $420,000. The remaining five platforms each earn less than $250,000 a month.
Growth is not limited to the leaders. LifeStance and Headway more than doubled their non-branded value year over year. Alma roughly quadrupled from a smaller base, the fastest growth rate in the study. Rula grew about 62%, BetterHelp about 55% and Thriveworks about 41%. Every platform with a full year of data grew, but at very different speeds. In a category where most competitors are accelerating, standing still means falling behind.
Brand dependency separates the field. Thriveworks earns 90% of its search value from non-branded searches, the strongest result in the study. Its location-by-location content captures patients searching by need and place rather than by name. At the other end, three platforms earn roughly 75% or more of their search value from people already searching for their brand. That value reflects demand those companies created through other channels; it does not show search winning new patients.
| Platform | Share of value from non-branded searches |
| Thriveworks | 90% |
| Talkspace | 83% |
| Ellie Mental Health | 65% |
| BetterHelp | 62% |
| Alma | 59% |
| LifeStance | 58% |
Year-over-year changes are estimates. Semrush periodically revalues high-volume keywords, which can shift branded and non-branded totals between periods.
Finding 4: Efficiency — Rula and Ellie Mental Health outperform their authority
Authority alone does not predict value. When we compare non-branded search value with each platform’s referring domains, the ranking changes.
| Platform | Authority Score | Non-branded value per referring domain |
| LifeStance | 53 | $65 |
| Talkspace | 63 | $51 |
| Thriveworks | 54 | $45 |
| BetterHelp | 65 | $31 |
| Rula | 44 | $27 |
Two results stand out:
- Rula shares the second-lowest Authority Score in the study (44), yet earns about $234,000 a month in non-branded value. That is roughly four times the value of a peer with an identical score. Rula has also invested visibly in comparison content, which we examine in Finding 6.
- Ellie Mental Health has the lowest Authority Score in the study (42) and less than 40% of one national platform’s total search value, yet it earns more non-branded value than that platform. Its franchise model produces a page for each clinic location, matching how patients search: by need and by town.
The lesson for growth-stage companies: the gap between authority and value is usually a content and architecture problem, not a link-building problem.
Finding 5: AI Visibility — BetterHelp and Talkspace dominate AI Overviews
BetterHelp and Talkspace account for 60% of the Google AI Overview citations we tracked across the 10 platforms. Semrush records BetterHelp in AI Overviews for more than 18,000 keywords and Talkspace for more than 15,000.
| Platform | Keywords where cited in Google AI Overviews |
| BetterHelp | 18,337 |
| Talkspace | 15,613 |
| LifeStance | 6,203 |
| Rula | 4,030 |
| Headway | 3,771 |
| Thriveworks | 3,715 |
The concentration is sharper than in traditional rankings. Three platforms in the study are cited in AI Overviews for fewer than 1,000 keywords each, a combined total smaller than Rula’s alone.
AI Overviews tend to cite sources that already rank well and answer questions directly. For platforms outside the leading group, that creates a compounding risk: weaker rankings lead to fewer AI citations, which leads to less visibility at the moment patients form their shortlist.
Finding 6: The comparison-content arms race
The insurance-based networks are now competing directly for each other’s brand searches. Patients who search a platform’s name plus "vs.," "alternatives," "reviews" or "cost" are close to a decision, and several platforms publish pages built to win exactly those searches.
Rula runs one of the most extensive programs we found. It maintains a library of head-to-head comparison and "best alternatives" articles covering most of its major competitors, updated as recently as August 2026. Grow Therapy maintains its own platform-comparison hub, with head-to-head pages against nine competitors.
The effect is that a company’s own brand demand can leak to a competitor at the last step. A patient who has already heard of a platform searches its name to learn more, and lands on a rival’s page that frames the decision. Platforms without their own comparison, pricing and insurance pages leave that conversation to someone else.
This also explains part of the brand-dependency pattern in Finding 3. Brand search value only protects a company if the company, not a competitor, owns the results for its own name.
Finding 7: Directories and local practices own the starting line
The 10 platforms in this study hold only 15 of the 100 first-page positions on the category’s core care-seeking searches. We examined the top 10 Google results for 10 high-intent searches, including "therapist near me" (165,000 monthly searches), "online therapy" (301,000) and "psychiatrist near me" (110,000).
| Who holds the first page | First-page positions (of 100) | Top-3 positions (of 30) |
| Independent and local practices | 31 | 5 |
| Directories and provider-finder sites | 29 | 11 |
| The 10 platforms in this study | 15 | 6 |
| Health information sites, insurers and government | 15 | 5 |
| Other telehealth companies | 10 | 3 |
Zocdoc and Psychology Today appear on the first page for 7 of the 10 searches between them. Directories hold more top-three positions than all 10 platforms combined. For "find a therapist," directories hold eight of the 10 first-page results.
Talkspace is the standout among the platforms. It appears on the first page for five of the 10 searches and holds the top position for both "online therapy" and "online therapy that takes insurance." BetterHelp ranks first for "online psychiatrist."
The implication applies to every platform in this market. The searches with the most volume are local and need-based, and the companies best built for them are directories and nearby practices. National platforms compete there only when they publish location, insurance and condition content that matches how patients actually search.
What growth-stage health companies should do next
The leaders in this study did not win search by accident. Five practices separate them from the rest of the field:
- Measure non-branded value, not total traffic (Finding 3). Track non-branded Organic Search Value monthly against a defined competitor set. If brand searches make up most of your value, your search program is harvesting demand rather than creating it.
- Build for the way patients search (Findings 4 and 7). Create pages for insurance plans, conditions, treatment types and locations. Thriveworks and Ellie Mental Health show how location and need-based pages capture patients who haven’t chosen a provider yet.
- Own your brand’s decision moment (Finding 6). Publish your own comparison, pricing, insurance and review pages so competitors don’t define your brand for patients searching your name.
- Convert authority into rankings (Findings 1, 2 and 4). If your authority is comparable to faster-growing peers but your value is far lower, the gap is usually site architecture and content depth. More links alone won’t close it. Our SEO services start with exactly this diagnosis.
- Optimize for AI answers now (Finding 5). Structure clinical and coverage content so AI Overviews and assistants can cite it: clear answers, credible authorship, schema markup and consistent facts across your site. Learn more about AI search optimization.
Expansion into new markets should come with a search plan for each one. Licensure gives a platform the right to serve patients. Search visibility determines whether those patients ever find it.
Questions to ask your marketing team
- What is our non-branded Organic Search Value this month, and how has it changed over the last 12 months?
- What share of our search value comes from people already searching for our name?
- Which competitors outrank us on insurance, condition and location searches, and by how much?
- Who ranks on page one when patients search our brand name plus "reviews," "cost" or "alternatives"?
- How often are we cited in Google’s AI Overviews and AI assistants compared with our competitors?
If any of these questions doesn’t have a clear answer, that is the first gap to close.
Frequently asked questions
What is Organic Search Value?
Organic Search Value is the estimated monthly cost to buy a website’s organic search traffic through paid ads. Semrush values each ranking keyword at its cost per click, multiplied by the traffic the ranking earns. Because buying-intent keywords cost more, it shows whether a site ranks for commercially relevant searches, not just how much traffic it gets.
Which mental health platforms lead in organic search?
In this study, Talkspace, LifeStance and BetterHelp lead, each earning more than $1.1 million a month in estimated non-branded search value. Together they account for 65% of the value across the 10 platforms analyzed. LifeStance holds the most top-three rankings, and BetterHelp and Talkspace are cited most often in Google’s AI Overviews.
Why do directories outrank therapy platforms?
The highest-volume care searches are local and need-based, such as "therapist near me" and "find a therapist." Directories like Psychology Today and Zocdoc publish a page for nearly every location, specialty and insurance plan, which matches those searches closely. In our sample, directories held 11 of 30 top-three positions; the 10 platforms held six.
How do Google’s AI Overviews affect mental health platforms?
AI Overviews summarize answers at the top of search results and cite a small set of sources. In this study, two platforms account for 60% of the AI Overview citations we tracked. Platforms that aren’t cited are less visible at the moment patients form their shortlist.
How can a health company improve its non-branded search visibility?
Start by measuring non-branded Organic Search Value against a defined competitor set. Then build pages for the insurance plans, conditions, treatments and locations patients search for, publish your own comparison and pricing content, and structure clinical content so AI assistants can cite it.
About Webolutions
Webolutions was founded in Denver in 1994 by John Vachalek, making it one of the most experienced web design and digital marketing agencies in the country. For more than 30 years, we have helped organizations turn their websites into measurable growth engines through SEO, AI search optimization, paid media, web design and marketing strategy.
Healthcare is one of our deepest areas of experience. For Colorado Advanced Orthopedics, our work produced a 482% increase in monthly organic search traffic and grew page-one keyword rankings from 408 to more than 2,100 terms, attracting patients from 39 states. South Denver Cardiology Associates has also seen strong results from its partnership with Webolutions.
This study is part of Webolutions’ Digital Performance Research series, which applies the same four-stage framework to industries across the Front Range and beyond. See how the same framework applies to Denver SaaS companies and what technology and SaaS buyers need now.
"Every health company we talk to knows its competitors. Far fewer know who their patients see first when they search. This research shows that the gap between those two lists is where growth is won or lost, and that closing it is a strategy decision, not a technical one." — John Vachalek, Founder, Webolutions
Want to know where your organization stands? Our Marketability Audit benchmarks your non-branded Organic Search Value, rankings, authority and AI visibility against the competitors that matter most to your growth. Contact Webolutions to discuss a Marketability Audit for your organization.
About the author
John Vargo is Webolutions’ SEO and AI Optimization expert. He has spent 25 years leading search strategy for Webolutions and its clients, from technical SEO and content architecture to optimization for AI answer engines such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity. He leads Webolutions’ Digital Performance Research series.
Methodology in detail
How we selected the 10 platforms
Most executives can name their competitors from memory: the companies their sales teams meet in deals, the names that come up in board meetings, the brands in analyst reports. Those are revenue competitors, and they matter. But a prospective patient searching "therapist who takes Aetna" never sees that list. They see whoever Google and AI assistants put in front of them, and that is often a different set of companies.
This study selects competitors through both lenses:
- Business competitors sell the same care to the same patients and payers. We identified them from company materials, analyst coverage, investor reporting and head-to-head comparison content.
- Search competitors share the most keywords and ranking overlap, based on Semrush’s Organic Competitors analysis.
Every platform in this study competes on at least one lens, and most compete on both. The 10 span insurance-based therapy networks, online therapy apps, national therapy and psychiatry practices, and a franchise clinic network. Some large revenue competitors, such as employer-focused platforms, appear only as context because they win customers through employers rather than search. Directories and health publishers also rank heavily in this category but are not care providers, so we report them separately.
If a competitor you expect is missing, or one you don’t expect is present, that difference is itself a finding. It shows where your view of the market and your patients’ view of the market have drifted apart.
Why we measure Organic Search Value in dollars
Traffic counts show how many people arrive. Organic Search Value shows whether those visitors come from searches that matter to the business. Semrush values each ranking keyword at what advertisers pay per click for that term, multiplied by the traffic the ranking earns. Keywords with buying intent carry high click costs, so a site ranking for commercially relevant searches earns a high value.
We report non-branded value: what remains after removing searches for a company’s own name. Brand searches show demand a company has already created. Non-branded searches show whether it is winning patients who haven’t chosen yet. All figures are estimated monthly ad-equivalent value, not revenue.
The four-stage framework
Webolutions’ Digital Performance Research framework traces where digital strength turns into competitive visibility, and where it stalls:
- Authority Capacity: the strength of the backlink profile (Semrush Authority Score and referring domains).
- Ranking Strength: how many keywords rank in the top three positions.
- Search-Market Value: estimated non-branded Organic Search Value and its year-over-year change.
- AI Visibility: how often a platform is cited in Google’s AI Overviews.
Data: Semrush, US database. Current figures are Semrush’s live data as of October 30, 2026; year-over-year comparisons use Semrush’s October 2025 monthly snapshot.
Sources and data notes
- Search data: Semrush Domain Overview, Organic Positions, Organic Competitors and Backlink Comparison reports, US database. Current data as of October 30, 2026; year-ago data from the October 2025 monthly snapshot.
- Non-branded value: Semrush Organic Traffic Cost minus the share attributable to keywords containing each platform’s brand name. Values are estimated monthly ad-equivalent value, not revenue.
- AI Overview citations: Semrush count of keywords for which the domain appears in Google’s AI Overview, US database, October 2026.
- Year-over-year changes are estimates and may reflect Semrush keyword revaluations as well as ranking changes. First-page analysis (Finding 7) uses Semrush’s top-10 organic results and search volumes for 10 care-seeking keywords: therapist near me, online therapy, psychiatrist near me, therapists who take aetna, online therapy that takes insurance, find a therapist, couples therapy near me, online psychiatrist, therapist for anxiety and therapists that take medicare.
- Comparison content: Rula’s comparison articles and Grow Therapy’s platform comparisons, reviewed October 30, 2026.
