Test whether self-promotional pages get AI assistants to recommend your brand: 34 pages, 9,886 answers, mixed results
Ahrefs published 34 self-promotional pages and tracked 9,886 AI answers for four months: they helped a new conference in a narrow niche, barely moved an established brand, and citations were often temporary.
Evidence: The author reports this. We have not checked it beyond reading the source.
The business problem
Founders wonder whether writing 'best of' lists and reviews that mention their own product will make ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot recommend it.
What was tried
The author published 34 self-promotional listicles, reviews and opinion pieces across five domains, promoting one established tool and one new conference. From February to May 2026 they tracked answers from four AI assistants on custom prompts using a brand-monitoring tool, separating 'cited' (clickable source) from 'found' (retrieved but not credited). A conference mention counted only for the exact event name. They then compared how often the pages were cited, whether the answer still named the brand, how long citations lasted, and how well the query matched the product niche.
What was reported (mixed)
The new conference appeared in 72 previously empty answer slots, 82% of them citing the author's pages, and rose to 65% of Copilot answers for the tracked query by May. For the established tool, only 6% of new mentions came from these pages. 43% of answers citing a conference page still skipped the event, about a quarter of citations never returned, and the longest unbroken citation run was 52 days.
Limitations
Run by a vendor that sells the monitoring tool and promotes its own products throughout. Small scale: 34 pages, two brands, one tracking period, and counting rules chosen by the author. The effect of moving pages from 'found' to 'cited' was not tested, and the 'query fit' explanation is a hypothesis. Data is not published for others to rerun.
What you need
Pages on domains that AI assistants already retrieve, and an AI-visibility tracking tool or a manual prompt log.
Sources
- Ahrefs Blog (Mateusz Makosiewicz) ↗ Vendor case study, published July 6, 2026
Source published: July 6, 2026. Last reviewed here: October 15, 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.
Tools in this workflow
- Ahrefs Brand Radar: Collected AI answers and citationsTry Ahrefs Brand Radar
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