Your competitor's glowing AI recommendation might be bought.
Companies were just caught flooding an 830,000-member subreddit with fake posts, written specifically so AI engines would repeat them.
I call this answer laundering: plant fake community posts, and the AI serves them back to your buyers as neutral advice. The recommendation looks organic. It was bought.
Why it works: AI answers lean heavily on community threads. Google's AI responses cite Reddit in roughly a fifth of cases.
The 10 minute audit: 1. Write the 5 questions a buyer would ask an AI before choosing in your category. 2. Run them through ChatGPT and Perplexity. 3. Click every Reddit citation. 4. Read the post history of whoever recommends your competitor.
If the glowing mentions trace back to a handful of accounts created last month, you are not losing to a better product.
Have you checked what the AI actually says about your category?
The move. Insight/reframe - names the dirty AEO tactic and hands over the 10-minute audit to catch it in your own category.
One of the things Alex keeps saying about go-to-market distribution. See the rest →