Welcome to your weekly no-BS briefing on AI search. See what changed, learn whatâs working, and get new ideas to steal, all in 5 minutes. Letâs goooo đ
In todayâs edition:
â Why Philips put its doctors and engineers on Reddit
đ ChatGPTâs traffic went missing, plus Anthropicâs rule on fake sources
đ A question that shows how many customers found you through AI
đ How a magazine from 1895 became the source farmers trusted
Mention worthy
đŹ Philips sent its engineers to Reddit
Most brands answer buyer questions on their FAQ page. Philips put its engineers and doctors on Reddit and let people ask them anything.
Philipsâ personal health team hosted a Reddit âAsk Me Anythingâ with credentialed engineers and doctors. The aim was to put expert, factual answers on a site AI models read heavily, then test whether it changed how often AI mentioned Philips.
Meghan Signalness, who runs media and marketing planning for the $4 billion business, told Fast Company the early results were âencouragingâ.
Why it works
đ It shows up where Googleâs AI looks. Reddit is one of the most-cited sites in AI answers, and Googleâs AI Overviews and AI Mode cite it most often.
đ Named experts carry more weight than a logo. Each answer comes from a person with credentials. Signalness says a doctor or dentist matters more to AI than âthat 20-year-old with a cellphoneâ.
đ The questions come in buyersâ own words. An AMA produces dozens of questions and answers phrased the way people actually ask, which is close to how they type into ChatGPT.
đĄ Steal this: the sales-call AMA
Pick the subreddit your buyers already use and message the moderators first, because most subreddits want AMAs agreed in advance.
Book one hour with your best expert, someone buyers would trust over a marketer. Before it starts, write answers to the 10 questions you hear most on sales calls, so you still have plenty to post if the thread is quiet.
Afterwards, publish the best answers as an FAQ on your site and link back to the thread.
Industry news
đïž AI search stories that matter this week
1. ChatGPTâs traffic went missing for a week. Since GPT-6 launched, ChatGPT links lost their tracking tag, so visits landed in âDirectâ. Across 500 pages, Adobeâs Cedric Huesler found ChatGPT visits fell by about 31,000 a day while Direct rose by 26,000. On 15 October he said it was a bug and the tags were back.
2. ChatGPT ads now come with a human account manager. Advertiser Anthony Higman shared an email introducing his âChatGPT Ads Account Managerâ. It offers a check-in every two weeks to review results and find improvements. OpenAI hasnât said who qualifies or how much you need to spend. If youâre testing ChatGPT ads, ask your rep whether you can get one.
3. Anthropic bans using Claude to fake âindependentâ sources. From 12 November, Claudeâs usage policy bars using it to manipulate âthe sources from which search engines or AI systems draw answersâ, including networks of sites posing as unrelated. Agencies canât sell this as a service either. If one offers to set up a group of âindependentâ review sites for you, say no.
Quick hits
đ€ Profound now shows AI bots the whole page. Many AI crawlers canât run JavaScript, so they miss any content that needs it to appear. Profoundâs Dynamic Bot Rendering serves bots from ChatGPT, Claude and others a fully loaded copy instead.
đ Peec AI says itâs the fastest-growing AI visibility tracker. Citing Rampâs spend data, Peec says its adoption rose from 4% to 19% in 18 months, and itâs opening a New York office. Expect clients to ask which tracker you use.
Try this
đ§Ș The one-question AI traffic check
Add this question to your sign-up, demo or contact form:
How did you first hear about us? (e.g. Google, LinkedIn, ChatGPT, a friend)
Keep it as a free-text box. Once a month, count the answers that name ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or another AI tool. Then compare that number with the AI traffic your analytics tool (such as Google Analytics) reports.
If people say AI sent them but your analytics disagrees, the difference has a name đ
Buzzwords of the week
đŁïž Dark AI traffic
Dark AI traffic is visits an AI tool sent you that your analytics files as âDirectâ.
It happens when a link arrives without a tag or referrer, the click comes from inside an app, or someone copies the link and pastes it. Last weekâs ChatGPT bug caused a sudden spike in it. Even with the bug fixed, some AI traffic will still show up as Direct.
đĄ My take: be wary of any vendor telling you how well dark AI traffic converts. Published figures range from 2.7% to over 10%, and none has been checked independently. The question above gives you your own number.
Steal this playbook
đ AirOps and Foundation: what 380,000 AI answers cite
AirOps and Ross Simmondsâ agency Foundation analysed over 380,000 AI answers and 3 million citations across 80+ B2B categories for The B2B AI Discovery Playbook.
Three bits worth stealing:
đ Report Google and the chatbots separately. Reddit appears in up to half of Googleâs AI answers, while Claude cites no Reddit or YouTube at all. A blended âAI visibilityâ number hides which side youâre winning.
đ Keep reviews coming all year. Review sites earn over 15% of citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, with G2 leading. Ask for a review right after a customer gives you a high satisfaction score.
đ Build comparison and alternative pages separately. âX vs Yâ and âalternatives to Xâ answer different prompts. A coffee-vs-tea shopper already knows tea, but a coffee-alternatives shopper may never have heard of matcha.
And the one to remember: in just three weeks, Reddit went from appearing in 1 in 5 ChatGPT answers to 1 in 30. Spread your mentions across several sources, so one change doesnât wipe you out.
Before the bots
đ How John Deere became the farmerâs first source
In 1895, John Deere, then run by the founderâs son Charles Deere, launched The Furrow. It was a magazine about farming: crops, techniques and running the business. Early issues carried some Deere adverts, but the stories were about the farmer.
It spread fast. By 1912 circulation had passed 4 million, and Deere bought its first electric printing press to keep up, printing 50,000 copies in eight hours. The Furrow is still published today, more than 130 years on.
đĄ The lesson for 2026: The Furrow earned farmersâ trust by helping with their work, so Deere was the name they knew when they needed a machine.
AI tools work the same way. They cite the source that answers the question, and the brand behind the most useful answers gets named.
đ Your move: list the questions customers ask you that your product doesnât answer, like âHow do I write a job ad that gets applicants?â if you sell payroll software. Pick the one you hear most and publish a step-by-step answer under your name.
See you next week đ
Sam
Your feedback helps me create better briefings for you!
P.S. Every story this week sits in one of the three pillars of The Mention Method, my process for getting brands named in AI answers. Want to know where your brand wins and loses across all three? Reply âMethodâ and Iâll walk you through it.
P.P.S. Worth a quick read: Learn how founders use LinkedIn to boost AI search visibility in 2026.