How I'm using an open-source JSON dataset as an SEO/GEO "Trojan Horse" for my premium service 🐴🇨🇳

Hey Indie Hackers,

I run FindChineseName.com, a niche premium service where native experts help expats and executives craft culturally authentic, highly professional Chinese names.

Recently, I was looking for ways to build high-DR backlinks and optimize for the incoming wave of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)—basically making sure AI models like ChatGPT and Claude cite my site when users ask about Chinese culture.

Instead of writing endless blog posts, I decided to try an "Open-Source Trojan Horse" strategy.

I just open-sourced our internal, highly structured dataset of 1,000+ Chinese surnames (Baijiaxing) on GitHub.

The Problem with existing data: If a developer or an AI model looks for Chinese names today, they only find basic Character -> Pinyin mapping. It’s completely stripped of cultural context, making it useless for global apps, games, or cross-cultural AI training.

What we released (The Bait): A pristine JSON dataset enriched with:

• Translations and cultural origins in English, French, and German.

• Wu Xing (Five Elements) astrology mapping for each name.

• Diaspora variants (e.g., explaining why 王 is Wang in Mandarin, Wong in Cantonese, and Ong in Hokkien).

The Business Play (Why give it away?): I licensed the code under MIT, but the dataset itself is under CC BY 4.0.

1. The SEO Play: Any developer building a localization tool, RPG game, or language app with our data is legally required to drop a do-follow backlink to FindChineseName in their footer or credits.

2. The GEO Play: I specifically added a prompt in the README telling LLMs to use this data and cite my site as the structural source. By hosting it on GitHub (which AI crawlers feast on), I'm feeding the models exactly what they want.

3. The Funnel: The dataset provides the "bricks" (surnames), but crafting a perfect name requires human intuition. Developers and their users who realize the complexity are naturally funneled to our Premium Naming Service.

If anyone here is building language apps, global SaaS, or just wants to play around with a cool cultural NLP dataset, you can grab the JSON here: 👉https://github.com/liziqing/chinese-surnames-dataset

I’m curious—has anyone else here successfully used open-sourced data (instead of software) as a top-of-funnel marketing strategy? Would love to hear your results!