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Ask HN: How does ChatGPT decide which websites to recommend?

5 points by nworley

by marcwajsberg

0 subcomment

The attribution point is huge: the “decision” can happen in the model’s answer, and your analytics only see the last hop.
A practical mental model for recommendations is less “ranking” and more confidence:
Does the model have enough context to map your product to a problem? Are there independent mentions (docs, comparisons, forum threads) that look earned vs manufactured? Is there procedural detail that makes it easy to justify recommending you (“here’s the workflow / constraints / outcomes”)? For builders, a good AEO baseline is: Publish a strong docs/use-case page that answers “when should I use this vs alternatives?” Seed real-world context by participating in existing discussions (HN/Reddit/etc.) with genuine problem-solving and specifics. Track influence with repeatable prompt tests + lightweight surveys (“how did you hear about us?”) since last-click won’t capture it.
It feels like early SEO again: less perfect instrumentation, more building the clearest and most defensible reference for your category.

by theorchid

1 subcomments

However, there is a lack of information when a user opens your website after interacting with AI.
Google Search Console shows the user's query if the query is popular enough and your website is in the search results. Bing shows all queries, even if they are not popular, and if your website is in the search results.
But if AI recommends your website when answering people's questions, you cannot find out what questions the user discussed, how many times your website was shown, and in what position. You can see the UTM tag in your website analytics (for example, GPT adds utm source), but that is the maximum amount of information that will be available to you. But if a user discussed a question with AI and only got your brand name, and then found your site in a search engine, you won't be able to tell that they found you with the help of AI advice.

by theorchid

1 subcomments

This is especially important when launching new SaaS projects. Google does not trust new domains for the first 6-12 months. But if you publish information about your project on other sites, the AI will recommend your site in its responses. Just post a few times on Reddit, and in a week, GPT will be giving out links to your SaaS product. AI doesn't need exact low-frequency or high-frequency keywords like SEO does. AI is good at understanding user queries and giving out the right SaaS that solves the user's problem. You don't need to create a blog on your website and try to rank it in search engines. It is enough to post articles on other websites with information about your project.

by allinonetools_

1 subcomments

I have noticed something similar while building small tools — AI recommendations seem to favor clarity and can this answer a real task fast over classic SEO signals. Pages that explain what they do plainly and work without friction show up more often than heavily optimized ones.

by raw_anon_1111

1 subcomments

Even if I did know, the last thing the world needs is for SEO folks to figure out how to game LLMs if they haven’t already.
SEO has made web search unusable and practitioners are the scum of the earth.
But more practically like Raymond Chen said, if every app could figure out how to keep their windows always on top, what good would it do? The same with SEO.