Anseo

I've been down a rabbit hole the last few weeks and it's changed how I think about early-stage distribution.

Buyers increasingly don't start at Google. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or read Google's AI Overview: "what's the best [category] tool?" The model hands back three to five names. If you're not one of them, you don't exist for that buyer, and unlike SEO there's no page 2 to scroll to.

So I started actually running these queries for a bunch of small SaaS products, and the pattern was rough. Most sub-$1M ARR products are completely absent from the answers. The tools that do show up aren't always the "best" ones; they're the ones with the most third-party mentions: listicles, Reddit threads, comparison posts, review sites. The models lean on a surprisingly small set of sources, so a few well-placed mentions move the needle a lot.

A few things that seem to help you get cited. Get onto "best [category] tool" listicles, because they get scraped constantly. Show up in Reddit and forum threads where people actually ask for recommendations. Have a clear, comparison-friendly "X is best for Y" description, since the models love structured framing. And remember that third-party validation beats your own copy: the models trust others describing you more than you describing yourself.

Genuinely easy to test for yourself: open ChatGPT, ask "what are the best [your category] tools," and see if you're in the list. Curious if anyone here has checked where they land, would love to hear what you find.