According to Inc, companies are now successfully gaming AI search results by writing their own “best of” listicles that feature their own business at the top. Credit card company Ramp uses this “answer engine optimization” strategy, and the agency Metajive tested it by ranking itself first in a blog post on the 10 best UX design agencies, which drove more traffic from large language models. The technique works because 81% of AI traffic goes through ChatGPT, which currently lacks a robust ranking system to spot self-promotion. Data shows ChatGPT’s web traffic tripled from 18.6 million visitors in July 2024 to 52.2 million in June 2025, and daily AI search usage doubled from 14% to 29% of consumers between February and August 2025. Furthermore, complex search queries with eight-plus words have surged 700% since AI Overviews launched in May 2024. The loophole is open, but the article warns it will close as AI evolves.
The current playbook
So, what’s the actual move right now? It’s shockingly straightforward. You create the very content you want to be cited for. Write an authoritative-looking “Top 10” list for your industry and put yourself in the number one slot. Build FAQ pages that directly answer commercial questions like “Who is the best [your service] agency?” with your company name. And then keep that content updated regularly to signal freshness and relevance to the AI crawlers. The goal is to match the exact question-and-answer structure people use in ChatGPT. It’s a brute-force method of telling the algorithm, “Hey, I’m the answer.” And for now, the algorithm is basically taking your word for it.
Why this works today
Here’s the thing: ChatGPT and similar AI agents aren’t Google. They don’t have decades of refining an algorithm to weigh domain authority, backlink profiles, and user engagement signals. They’re pattern-matching engines trained on a vast corpus of web data. If they see a well-structured, seemingly authoritative list on a .com domain that answers a user’s prompt, they’re likely to regurgitate it. They’re not yet sophisticated enough to consistently distinguish between genuine third-party acclaim and clever self-promotion. This is a temporary gap in the AI’s reasoning, and businesses are rushing to fill it. With nearly half of Americans already using GenAI for product recommendations, according to eMarketer, the incentive to be in those answers is massive.
The inevitable crackdown
But let’s be real. This isn’t a sustainable strategy. OpenAI isn’t going to let its flagship product become a spam-filled directory of self-proclaimed “best” companies. The article admits this directly. The loophole will close, likely with the introduction of ranking criteria similar to Google’s—things like domain authority, the presence of genuine third-party citations, and user interaction signals. The AI will learn to spot and demote obvious self-promotion. When that happens, those carefully crafted listicles will lose their power overnight. The long-term game, as it always has been, will revert to earning real recognition: press mentions, client reviews on sites like G2, and industry awards.
Shifting search behavior
Maybe the most interesting part of all this isn’t the hack, but what it reveals about how we search now. That BrightEdge data is wild—a 700% increase in complex, long-tail queries. People aren’t just typing “best panel PC” anymore. They’re asking, “What is the most reliable industrial panel PC for a wet factory environment?” This shift towards hyper-specific, conversational queries is the new frontier. It creates opportunity for those who can answer the nuanced questions competitors ignore. The vocabulary is getting more technical, too. Basically, to win in an AI-driven search world, you need to deeply understand your customer’s most specific problems and write the definitive answer. Even before AI, understanding how people search was key. Now, it’s everything.
