Understanding and healing from trauma
Bessel van der Kolk, MD (besselvanderkolk.com) scores 67 out of 100 on Brand Analyzer, placing it in the Developing tier among Healthcare brands, Education brands, in the 15th percentile of 19050 Healthcare brands.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD is a psychiatrist and trauma researcher whose website focuses on helping people understand and heal from trauma through safe connection and body-mind awareness. Drawing on decades of neuroscience research and clinical practice, he is best known for his book 'The Body Keeps the Score.' His work targets trauma survivors, mental health professionals, researchers, and anyone seeking to understand trauma's impact on the mind and body, positioning him as a leading voice in trauma treatment and research.
| Brand Name | Bessel van der Kolk, MD |
|---|---|
| Domain | besselvanderkolk.com |
| Industry | Healthcare, Education |
| Main Competitors | Gabor Maté (76/100), Peter Levine / Somatic Experiencing (79/100), The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) (80/100), The Trauma Research Foundation (69/100), Judith Herman, PESI, Inc. (88/100) |
Moz Domain Authority 49/100 vs category average 40 / leader 95 - a strong backlink profile, so AI systems frequently encounter mentions of the brand.
Ranked #433,722 on the Tranco list of most-visited sites - modest traffic makes the brand easy for AI models to overlook.
No Wikipedia presence was found - a major gap, since Wikipedia is among the most heavily weighted sources in AI training data.
The homepage meta description reads "To help people understand and heal from trauma by fostering safe connections and awareness of inner experience." (No meta description) - this is the summary AI engines are most likely to quote.
Structured data on the homepage: canonical. Adding Organization and FAQ schema would further help AI crawlers parse the brand's identity.
AI-crawler access: robots.txt present, no AI bot restrictions - robots.txt controls whether engines like GPTBot and ClaudeBot can read the site at all.
Detected tech stack: Cloudflare, WordPress, Ghost.
Social footprint: verified profiles on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube; no detected presence on X (Twitter), LinkedIn, GitHub - consistent profiles reinforce the brand's identity across the web.
0 Reddit mentions - community discussion signals real-world reputation to AI models.
Live results from asking a general-purpose AI assistant about the brand, checked October 2026.
When asked "What is Bessel van der Kolk, MD?", Claude could identify the brand as of October 2026. Bessel van der Kolk, MD is a psychiatrist and researcher renowned for his work on trauma and PTSD, and this site is his professional platform showcasing his research, clinical work, and the Trauma Research Foundation he founded. Best known for Writing 'The Body Keeps the Score,' a bestselling book on how trauma affects the body and mind.
When asked "Best brands similar to Bessel van der Kolk, MD?", Claude would recommend Bessel van der Kolk, MD as of October 2026. He's one of the most prominent voices in trauma treatment and research, so he'd naturally come up in discussions of leading experts in trauma-informed care.
Common questions people ask in Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI search engines.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD's main competitors in Healthcare: Gabor Maté (76/100), Peter Levine / Somatic Experiencing (79/100), The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) (80/100), The Trauma Research Foundation (69/100), PESI, Inc. (88/100).
Sources: Brand Analyzer scan
Bessel van der Kolk, MD has low AI-search visibility, scoring 20/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI visibility composite (visibility 5, trust 26, recommendation 40). This estimates how likely AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are to know, trust, and recommend the brand.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD scores 40/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI recommendation signal, indicating it is less likely to be surfaced when AI assistants like ChatGPT suggest Healthcare options. Recommendation depends on crawlability, structured data, and category authority.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD is a psychiatrist, researcher, and author recognized as a leading authority on trauma and its effects on the mind and body. His website serves as a platform sharing his research, clinical insights, and trauma-informed treatment approaches.
He is best known for his landmark book 'The Body Keeps the Score,' which explores how trauma affects the brain, body, and behavior, and for pioneering a trauma-informed, body-centered approach to mental health treatment.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD can improve AI discoverability by strengthening structured data (Organization and FAQ schema), maintaining an accurate Wikipedia/Wikidata entity, earning authoritative citations, and keeping content crawlable for AI bots. Brand Analyzer measures these as visibility, trust, and recommendation signals.
Trauma survivors, mental health professionals, researchers, and individuals interested in understanding how trauma affects the mind and body use this resource.
He is popular due to his landmark work 'The Body Keeps the Score,' which introduced a widely influential mind-body framework for understanding and treating trauma, resonating with both professionals and general audiences seeking to understand trauma's impact.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD scores 20/100 for AI visibility - how well ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can discover, identify and cite the brand.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD has a weak AI-visibility profile at 20/100 - a proxy for how readily ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can recognise and cite it. Its strongest area is recommendation likelihood (40/100) and its weakest is visibility (5/100). It benefits from a global traffic rank of #433,722 (Tranco), a Moz Domain Authority of 49/100 and open access for AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.). The main gaps holding it back: no clear Wikipedia entity to anchor it in LLM training data, no strong Wikidata entry and thin schema.org structured data. In a live check, Claude could already identify Bessel van der Kolk, MD from memory (October 2026) - a sign these signals are paying off.
The score combines seven dimensions - name quality, digital presence, visual identity, messaging clarity, trust foundation, AI discoverability, and brand authority - into a single objective benchmark.
Ranked closest to Bessel van der Kolk, MD: BenefitsCheckUp (67/100), בית איזי שפירא (Beit Issie Shapiro) (67/100), Bhakti Wellness Center (67/100), BioHarvest Sciences (67/100).
A step up - brands to learn from: Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland e.V. (71/100), ZT Corporate (71/100).
Category leader: Booksy (96/100).
Brand Analyzer is built by DataEase AI. Track your brand in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.