Best-of lists and roundups
Get your brand onto the lists AI reads
When someone asks an AI assistant for the best option, the answer is assembled from best-of lists, comparisons and reviews on other people's sites. We get you onto those pages.
The problem
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for the best product or provider in your category and look at the sources. Most of them are roundups: "best X", "top 10 Y", "X alternatives". If you are not on those pages, the engine has nothing to pull your name from.
Your own website cannot fix this. In our tracking across three verticals, a brand's own site was 2 to 6 percent of what AI engines cited. Ahrefs found that about 43.8 percent of the pages ChatGPT cites are listicles.
What we do
We run your buyers' questions through the engines and record every source URL they cite. That gives us the exact lists that decide the answer in your category, ranked by how often they are used.
We pitch the publisher of each list, with the facts and proof they need to include you. Where a publisher sells placements, we tell you the price and you decide.
We write honest comparison and best-of pages for your own site and for third-party sites, so there are more good sources that name you.
Deliverables
- A source map: every list and roundup the engines cite for your priority prompts, with how often each is used
- Outreach to the publishers of those lists, with a pitch written for each
- A clear split between earned placements and paid ones, with prices shown before anything is bought
- Comparison and best-of pages for your own site, written so an engine can quote them
- Monthly tracking of new placements and whether the engines have picked them up
How placement works
There are four ways onto a list, and a good campaign uses all of them.
- 1. Editorial outreach
We email the author or editor with a short, specific case for including you: what you sell, who it is for, and proof they can check. This is slow and it is free. It works best on lists that are updated often.
- 2. Reciprocal listings
Many lists are published by companies in or near your category. If you publish a fair comparison that includes them, you have a reason to write to them and they have a reason to look at you.
- 3. Paid placements
Some publishers sell inclusion or sponsored articles. We check the site's real traffic and whether the engines cite it before recommending one, show you the price, and never buy without your approval.
- 4. Reviews and syndication
A dedicated product review on a trusted publication, or a feature distributed through a newswire, puts your name on domains the engines already use.
What this looks like in practice
For Try Create, a Fortune review named the product, and ChatGPT's answer to "what is the best creatine gummy" cites Fortune. You can follow that chain yourself from the case study.
For Lux Unfiltered, listicle placement ran alongside a feature distributed through Stacker's newswire, which put the hero product on regional news domains. Gemini named Lux as its best dye-free pick for tanning face drops.
For InCorp, an earned placement in a "best registered agent services" roundup sits beside a year of content work.
What we will not do
We do not buy links on sites nobody reads, and we do not promise a specific list by a specific date. Publishers decide what they publish. What we can promise is a source map built from real engine answers, a pitch for every list on it, and an honest record of what landed.
Client results
Scaled organic revenue 12.5x. Still ChatGPT's #1 pick for "what is the best creatine gummy" a year after the engagement ended
Named by Gemini as its best dye-free pick for tanning face drops, with 10+ products ranking across AI search
Non-branded organic traffic grew roughly 10x in a year and is still climbing
Further reading
- AI citation sources study: where AI engines get their answers
- Digital PR and citation building
- Reddit marketing for AI search
- The best AEO agencies, compared
Frequently asked questions
What is listicle placement?
Listicle placement is the work of getting a brand included in best-of lists, roundups and comparison articles on third-party websites. AI engines lean on these pages when someone asks for a recommendation, so being on them is one of the most direct ways to be named in the answer.
Are the placements earned or paid?
Both exist, and we keep them separate. Earned placements come from outreach and from giving a publisher a good reason to include you. Paid placements are offered by some publishers. We show you which is which, with the price, before anything is bought.
How do you choose which lists to go after?
We start from the engines, not from a link database. We run your priority prompts, record the sources each engine cites, and rank the lists by how often they are used. A list that ChatGPT and Gemini both cite is worth more than a high-authority page they ignore.
How long does it take?
Editorial outreach takes weeks and depends on when a publisher next updates the page. Paid placements can go live in days. After a placement lands, the engine still has to retrieve the updated page, so allow for a lag before the answer changes.
Can you guarantee a placement?
No. Editors decide what goes on their lists. Any agency that guarantees a named publication is either buying the slot or guessing.
Should we publish our own best-of list?
Often, yes. A fair comparison on your own site gives engines another quotable source and opens a conversation with the other companies on it. It has to be honest about where a competitor is the better choice, or nobody will cite it.
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