GoKawiilStudy finds three AI-optimized sites dominate Perplexity's 'best software' citations
A study of 380 software categories found that nearly 60% of the sources Perplexity's Sonar models cite when recommending products come from domains ranked outside the top 100,000 sites by traffic, and almost a quarter aren't ranked at all. Three interlinked domains, none older than December 2023 and two with homepages literally titled 'Facts & Grounding Page', have published over 215,000 machine-generated 'best software' pages designed to be retrieved by AI models rather than read by humans.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
This suggests a new category of content farm has emerged specifically to game AI retrieval systems rather than search engines, exploiting the fact that grounded AI answers often prioritize freshness and structure over traditional authority signals like traffic or backlinks. If AI assistants are citing low-traffic, purpose-built pages for buying recommendations, users may be getting product advice shaped by SEO-style manipulation rather than genuine market data.
- 59.8% of citations in Perplexity's grounded software recommendations come from domains outside Tranco's top 100,000 sites.
- Three young domains (none predating December 2023) have generated over 215,000 auto-produced 'best software' pages aimed at AI retrieval.
- The study covered 380 categories and 760 API calls to Perplexity's Sonar and Sonar-pro models, excluding Google due to differing retrieval mechanisms.
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See The Art of SEO (O'Reilly book) on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: trellner.com, 2026-09-02
Published there as: “Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them”
Read the original report → The summary and analysis above are GoKawiil's own, written from reporting by the source above. Facts and quotes belong to the original publisher.