On Monday a cold email landed in our inbox. A software directory had seen our Hacker News launch and wanted to make a point: ask ChatGPT for the best tools in your category and you probably won't show up, because ChatGPT gets its answers from "10 best tools" articles and you're not in one. For $49, they would publish one with us ranked first.
The email had filled in our product name automatically. It read: "see if See what ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini say about your business shows up." Our tagline, pasted where a name should go. Nobody had looked at our site.
The pitch still deserves a proper answer. Thousands of small firms are getting emails like it, and half of what it says is true.
What the $49 actually buys
We read the directory's pricing page. The free listing gives you a link that passes no search value, and only if you put their badge on your site. $29 buys a link that does pass value and a week on the featured row. $49 puts you at number one on a "Best of" article for your category. If no such article exists yet, one is generated automatically with you at the top.
The example they link to is a list of the best social media scheduling software. At number one, above Buffer, Hootsuite and Sprout Social, sits an app for collecting photos from event guests. The list's own cons section for it says: not a social media scheduler.
The community looked thin as well. The site's top-ranked "founder" is credited with launching Framer, Supabase, Figma, Notion and Vercel. One person did not build all five.
What the engines actually read
We happened to have fresh data. The same morning we ran our regular check of how ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity answer five buyer questions about our own market, questions like "recommend a fixed-fee AI consultancy in London". That gave us 15 answers and 181 cited links.
| Source type | Examples from our sample | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Firms' own websites | kelriva.ai (cited in 9 answers), augustova.co.uk (5), theaiconsultancy.ai (3) | Clear, quotable pages on your own site do most of the work |
| Listing and review platforms | Sortlist (4 answers), Clutch (2), G2 (1) | Profiles with checked details carry weight |
| Editorial guides and "best of" lists | Clever Merchants, OpenKit, FactoryJet, Indexify | Lists do get cited when they answer the exact question |
| Official records | Companies House | Used to confirm a company is real |
| Pay-for-rank directories | None in this sample | Not cited once |
So the email is half right. AI engines do read "best of" articles, and several turned up in our sample. Look at which ones, though: guides written about UK AI consultancies specifically, on sites with some history, answering the question the buyer actually asked. Not a generic page generated in three minutes with whoever paid sitting on top.
The other half is wrong, at least for us. ChatGPT named Kelriva and linked to our site in all five of its answers. We have never paid for a listing anywhere.
The risk nobody mentions
Paying for a link that passes search value goes against Google's spam policies unless the link is marked as sponsored. A page that ranks an event photo app as the best scheduling tool is exactly the kind of page search engines learn to ignore. At that point the link is worth nothing, or less.
There is a quieter cost too. If an engine does pick up a list like that, it repeats a ranking a buyer can see through in ten seconds. Being first on a list nobody believes is not the same as being recommended.
Five checks before you pay for a "best of" spot
Open the list and read who is number one. If it doesn't fit the category, the ranking is for sale.
Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity the exact question your buyers ask and look at the sources. If the site never appears for any question in your market, it isn't where the engines look.
Check whether the reviewers and founders on the site are real people with a history somewhere else.
Ask whether the link is marked as sponsored. If they promise it isn't, treat that as a reason to walk away, not a selling point.
Compare the price with the alternative: a proper profile on the two or three platforms the engines already cite for your sector, and a website that answers the buyer's question in plain text.
If you want to see what the engines say about you today, and which sources they lean on, our free AI Visibility Score asks the same kind of questions about your business and shows the cited links. Then you can decide where the effort, or the $49, is worth spending.