Why Calling Yourself The Best Could Be Helping Your Competitors Win In AI Search

Jun 18, 2026 04:00 PM - 4 hours ago 216

One of the astir celebrated strategies to power responses successful AI hunt has been to create a “listicle” article that lists the champion brands, products, aliases services successful a fixed industry, and to rank the aforesaid institution publishing the article arsenic the champion action successful the space.

The manufacture calls these “self-promotional listicles,” and to date, they’ve undoubtedly served arsenic 1 of the astir effective ways to power AI answers, putting speech whether it’s a smart branding thought to station biased contented that has the imaginable to erode spot pinch immoderate quality scholar who encounters it.

But aft analyzing 100 B2B “best [category]” queries crossed Google’s AI Overviews – pulling the existent answers and their cited sources astatine 3 different dates betwixt April and June 2026 – I judge that Google has made changes to really it treats self-promotional listicles successful generative AI responses.

And now, for galore sites, self-promoting listicles mightiness really beryllium much of a liability than an asset. Imagine being cited arsenic a source, but not the recommended marque successful the reply – while the competitors you mentioned successful your listicle get recommended successful your place.

If you’re chiefly focused connected search “AI citations” arsenic a occurrence metric for AI search, I person bad news for you: A self-serving listicle tin gain you a citation, but successful galore cases, it tin backfire, serving arsenic a ballot for your competitors arsenic recommendations while leaving your marque retired of the AI reply entirely.

This isn’t conscionable a hunch from a fewer screenshots aliases anecdotes (although I person seen more and more group coming to akin conclusions). Across the categories I tracked, a self-promoter’s ain listicle sewage cited but near retired of the proposal astir two-thirds (69%) of the time, and I’ll locomotion done precisely really I measured it passim this article.

Citations person already proven to beryllium a questionable metric to way to measurement AI hunt success, fixed that LLMs are designed to supply the afloat reply without the personification needing to click anywhere. We’ve each seen firsthand the low referral postulation numbers flowing into our customer accounts from AI assistants. A Pew Research study from 2025 besides recovered that erstwhile a Google hunt produced an AI summary, users clicked a nexus wrong the summary itself successful conscionable 1% of visits.

Given really AI hunt is evolving, I’d reason that betwixt the prime of earning a citation aliases earning a marque recommendation, the proposal is what really matters – by an bid of magnitude – particularly fixed that an increasing number of users are utilizing voice features erstwhile utilizing AI assistants.

What Actually Changed With Listicles In AI Responses?

Here’s my publication connected what changed: I judge Google adjusted really it treats self-promotional listicles for galore queries, and the results look to dangle wholly connected really established, authoritative, and well-recommended your marque already is.

In short, Google’s accommodation appears to person devalued self-promotional listicles arsenic an effective maneuver for the mean site, truthful that whether 1 still useful now depends almost wholly connected the spot of the marque publishing it.

If you’re an established, charismatic brand, you tin still people a listicle calling your marque the best, and you whitethorn get some cited and recommended. But I’d reason it mightiness not beryllium worthy it, fixed the distaste it tin time off pinch readers, and the imaginable for this type of page to go a liability if/when Google chooses to ace down harder connected “inauthentic mentions.” We’ve already seen the first signs, which I’ll explicate later successful this article.

Plus, for established brands, plentifulness of different sites are apt already recommending you – which is what appears to really move the needle successful AI Overview responses successful the first place. Furthermore, fixed really overmuch scrutiny self-promoting listicles are now getting successful the media (more connected that later), it mightiness not beryllium the champion look.

If you’re a smaller brand, though, you whitethorn really beryllium shooting yourself successful the ft by publishing self-promotional listicles. Google whitethorn beryllium treating your ain article arsenic a ballot for your competitors, while leaving you retired of the proposal entirely. I’ll stock examples later of what this looks for illustration successful practice.

The TL;DR

According to my caller research, erstwhile a B2B marque publishes its ain “best [category]” listicle that ranks itself arsenic No. 1, Google’s AI surfaces (AI Overviews + AI Mode) whitethorn cite that listicle arsenic a root but leave the self-promoting marque retired of the existent proposal astir two-thirds (69%) of the time. The AI Overview recommendations consistently spell to the established class leaders instead.

How Widespread Have Listicles Become?

It’s nary concealed that self-promotional listicles person worked to power really AI answers urge brands since connection models were first launched. The maneuver has go peculiarly celebrated successful the SaaS space. For example, this is 1 of hundreds* of articles Shopify has published wherever they telephone their ain marque the No. 1 ecommerce level for various usage cases:

*Shopify antecedently had complete 100 of these types of articles, but it appears that they are culling galore of these pages from the tract now.

One logic this maneuver useful truthful good comes down to SEO itself. These pages target the nonstop building “what is the champion marque for X” – a building that, until recently, drew small competition, since astir brands only began publishing pages aimed astatine these position successful the past mates of years. Before AI hunt and GEO arrived, location was a contented void astir questions for illustration “which is the champion marque for X?” aliases “what are the champion [services]?” – largely, I’d argue, because astir brands weren’t comfortable putting specified openly biased contented successful beforehand of their quality readers.

When it became clear that it worked arsenic a GEO (AI hunt optimization) tactic, the attack was popularized and spammed astatine standard by thousands of companies, peculiarly successful the B2B space. Not only has it now been showcased crossed dozens of SEO conferences, YouTube videos, online webinars, blogs, and industry publications, but the media besides started to screen this utilization successful caller months. I collaborated and said to a fewer journalists who precocious wrote pieces exposing the efficacy of this method of influencing Google’s AI responses:

I hacked ChatGPT and Google’s AI – and it only took 20 minutes – Thomas Germain, BBC
How Accurate Are Google’s A.I. Overviews? – Tripp Mickle et al., New York Times
Your Search Results Are Getting Sloptimized – Will Oremus, The Atlantic

To measurement whether self-serving listicles are really proliferating (or whether it conscionable feels that way), I had Claude propulsion each “best [X] software” page wherever a vendor ranks its ain listicle (usually astatine No. 1) from crossed my AI Overviews data: 184 self-promoting listicle pages crossed 146 brands (many brands people much than one).

I utilized the Ahrefs MCP to drawback the monthly integrated postulation history for each individual URL, utilizing the first period a page picked up integrated postulation arsenic a proxy for erstwhile it really went unrecorded and started ranking successful integrated search. By stacking those motorboat dates up by year, the inclination is difficult to miss: this isn’t a fewer opportunists, it’s an industry-wide onshore drawback that went viral successful 2025 (likely pinch the “GEO boom“).

And this is only a mini portion of the web: If the inclination is this pronounced successful my sample, the maturation successful this page type that Google and different hunt engines are seeing crossed their afloat scale is surely acold larger. But the proliferation of these pages is only portion of the question. The much absorbing 1 – and the 1 that really matters if you’re deciding whether to support pumping retired these pages – is whether they still work. Not whether they tin rank, and not whether they get cited, but whether they really get your marque recommended successful AI answers.

So, what is Google starting to do to combat this influx of pages meant to manipulate its AI responses?

Consequence #1: Google Demoted These Sites’ Organic Visibility

Now that the maneuver is everywhere, Google has started pushing back, and the first motion was successful integrated hunt earlier this year. In January of 2026, Google appears to person made an algorithmic accommodation that substantially demoted the integrated visibility of the sites heavy employing this tactic, peculiarly affecting the subfolders that housed these self-promoting listicles.

Around January 20th, 2026, astatine slightest dozens of sites, including a fistful of major, well-known brands, saw integrated postulation statesman to autumn rapidly. I analyzed complete 40 of these sites, including respective clients I’ve helped since this adjustment.

Self-promotional listicles were 1 of respective imaginable issues pinch these sites’ approaches. Most affected companies were utilizing a assortment of strategies that could awesome SEO/GEO spam to Google: scaling AI-generated content to thrust SEO and AI hunt traffic; scaling pages pursuing different SEO-driven formats (comparison/alternative pages, “who/what/when” pages), and, successful astir cases, excessive self-promotional listicles. And I’m not talking astir 1 listicle aliases a handful: these sites often had hundreds, aliases moreover thousands, of articles calling their ain marque the No. 1 champion compared to the competition. The orangish lines beneath show projected integrated traffic, via Ahrefs:

Since that point, affected companies person mostly seen the declines proceed and impact much than conscionable the targeted folder; galore impacted sites person seen visibility driblet across the full domain, pinch drops accelerating during Google’s caller May 2026 halfway update.

This effect is simply a bully illustration of why employing SEO strategies that push the boundaries of Google’s policies tin beryllium risky for the visibility of the full domain; not conscionable the contented that violated its policies. And, arsenic I’ve mentioned successful erstwhile Substack articles, losing SEO visibility tin origin downstream effects connected AI hunt visibility arsenic well.

These algorithmic adjustments are conscionable 1 portion of the story. I judge Google, successful particular, has precocious made changes to really it uses accusation from these self-promotional listicles successful AI Overviews.

Consequence #2: Google Appears To Be Excluding Many Self-Promoting Brands From Its Recommendations

To pin down whether Google is dropping self-promoters from its AI recommendations, I group retired to measurement it directly. I had Claude propulsion the AI Overview answers for 100 B2B “best [category] software” queries, utilizing the Ahrefs Brand Radar MCP, which provides AI Overview reply matter and the nonstop sources it cited, and besides lets maine propulsion those answers astatine humanities dates. You tin position the afloat database of the keywords I analyzed here.

I chose 1 canonical mobility per class and grabbed it astatine 3 checkpoints (April 15, May 15, and June 8, 2026), truthful I was watching the aforesaid mobility and reply brace complete time. For each answer, I separated the AI hunt metrics group often conflate erstwhile they judge whether a listicle worked:

Cited: the brand’s ain “best [category]” listicle shows up successful the answer’s database of sources, either wrong the reply aliases successful the sidebar.
Recommendations: the marque is really named arsenic a prime successful the AI Overview reply itself.

As it turns out, citations and recommendations tin behave rather differently, and for self-promoting sites, the quality betwixt them tin lead to dramatically different business outcomes.

Here’s what I found: Across the 80 prompts that triggered an AI Overview (notably, astir 1 successful 5 “best software” queries didn’t aboveground an AI Overview astatine all), when a brand’s ain self-promotional listicle sewage cited arsenic a source, that marque was near retired of the existent proposal 69% of the time (224 of the 323 self-promotional listicles cited crossed those prompts) connected AI Overviews.

This wasn’t a fistful of separator cases, either. Across the 3 months, 74 of the 100 prompts I tracked (74%) returned an AI Overview reply that cited a self-promoter’s ain listicle, but near that marque retired of the recommendation.

See the illustration beneath for the query “best LMS for trading courses,” wherever Oasis LMS is cited each complete the reply – some in-line and successful the correct sidebar – but the marque is not recommended successful the response:

Despite its predominant citations successful the answer, Oasis LMS is excluded arsenic a proposal from the response. In its cited article, it names itself arsenic the No. 1 champion “LMS for trading courses.” While this self-recommendation doesn’t power the AI response, its mentions of competitors Kajabi, Thinkific, LearnWorlds, and Teachable whitethorn person helped boost them, pinch each of them earning the AI Overview recommendation.

For the related query “best learning guidance system,” statement really Kredo Learning is cited successful the correct sidebar, but not recommended successful the answer:

When visiting the cited URL, Kredo Learning lists its institution arsenic the Best LMS Platform successful India. While its ain marque is excluded from the response, its listed competitors, TalentLMS and Docebo, are recommended successful the answer. The citation appears to enactment arsenic a ballot for Kredo Learning’s competitors.

For different query, “best thief table software,” announcement really Pylon is listed arsenic a citation nether the “Help Scout” recommendation, contempt not being 1 of the recommended brands:

Pylon does database its marque arsenic the No. 1 marque successful its cited article, but that self-endorsement does not power the AI recommendations shown successful AI Overviews. However, Pylon besides recommends Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Help Scout successful its article – the apical 3 brands recommended successful the answer.

Another self-promotional listicle that serves arsenic a cited URL wrong the supra AI Overview comes from Crisp, which is besides not recommended successful the answer. However, it recommends Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Help Scout, which each made it into the recommendation.

For “best task guidance software,” the self-promoting listicle by TMetric makes it into the sidebar arsenic 1 of the cited pages utilized to build the response.

But contempt recommending itself successful its article, TMetric is not 1 of the recommended brands successful the response. However, its listed competitors, Todoist, Asana, Trello, and ClickUp, each made it into Google’s AI recommendation.

For the query “best study software,” Pollfish is cited heavy passim the article, pinch not one, but 2 self-promotional listicles. Despite their efforts, Pollfish is not a recommended marque successful the response:

However, respective of its recommended competitors – Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, and Typeform, each made it into the proposal (with Pollfish’s article utilized arsenic the citation for all).

Why Do Self-Promotional Listicles Work For Some Sites But Not Others?

This is wherever things get interesting. When you look astatine who does get recommended, the reply appears to beryllium consistent: the established class leaders that are heavy recommended crossed galore third-party pages, are often recommended successful AI responses, and person important backlink profiles, compared to their self-promoting listicle competitors. If you announcement that the self-promotional listicles tin and do still work, I judge that Google mightiness beryllium giving a spot of a free walk to the companies who are already authoritative, trusted players successful their respective industries.

Here are immoderate examples: For “best task guidance software,” Google’s AI cites self-promoting listicles from Wrike, Paymo, Celoxis, and Kanbanchi, and past recommends well-known brands, Asana, Monday, ClickUp, and Notion. None of the self-promoting brands made the recommendation, but the well-known competitors they listed each did.

So what really separates the brands that get recommended from the ones that only get cited? It’s not really good the page is built: I checked, and the excluded brands often person perfectly strong, well-optimized pages and sites; that’s why their listicle ranks and gets pulled successful arsenic a root successful the first place. The existent quality is really often the marque is talked astir and linked to everywhere else – real authority signals.

Note: I want to caveat this conception by saying it’s difficult to fig retired the existent reply present (unless, of course, you activity astatine Google). To adhd to that, location are immoderate examples of lesser-known self-promoting listicle brands who occasionally make it into the answer, though this appears to beryllium progressively rare. I’ll stock really I took a stab astatine trying to fig this portion out:

I utilized the Ahrefs Brand Radar MCP to propulsion various metrics related to really often a marque is mentioned successful AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and really galore backlinks its domain has arsenic proxies for really well-known and charismatic the marque is. Below are a fewer examples of keywords I utilized to analyse the competitory landscape:

For “Best HR Software:” the recommended brands (BambooHR, Workday, Gusto, Deel, Rippling) person acold much referring domains, AI Overview marque mentions, and ChatGPT marque mentions than their cited-but-not-recommended counterparts (PeopleForce and HR Acuity).

The lower-authority sites person self-promoting listicles utilized arsenic citations successful the response, but are not recommended brands successful the answer.

In this case, Paylocity is the 1 objection to the norm – it has a competitory Domain Rating and wide backlink count, but Google didn’t see it successful the recommendation.

For “Best CRM for Small Business,” the only self-promoting listicle whose marque was besides recommended is Monday, which has a Domain Rating successful the ’90s and 75,000 referring domains. 4 retired of the 5 cited but not recommended listicle brands person substantially little referring domains and domain ratings.

For “Best CRM Software,” recommended brands for illustration HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM show acold higher referring domains, positive AI Overview and ChatGPT marque mentions. Kylas – a tract cited pinch a self-promotional listicle successful the answer, but not recommended successful the consequence – trails connected each metric pinch 0 AI Overview aliases ChatGPT mentions, and acold less referring domains than competitors.

For “Best SEO software,” the 2 cited brands recommending themselves autumn acold beneath their recommended competitors crossed each metrics.

The shape is the aforesaid for each the queries I checked: lesser-known, little charismatic brands utilizing self-promotional listicles to urge their ain marque thin to beryllium cited arsenic sources to thief shape the response, but near retired of the proposal compared to their higher-authority, better-known counterparts.

Consequence #3: Embarrassing Disclaimers In AI Overviews (And Other LLMs)

Google besides appears to beryllium adding immoderate new disclaimers to AI Overviews for definite queries wherever these listicles thin to beryllium prevalent. For example, erstwhile asking astir the “real champion SEO experts,” Google AI Overviews precocious warned maine that our manufacture is “saturated pinch self-proclaimed experts.” It provides guidance connected amended ways of evaluating professionals:

This reply to a akin mobility besides included a mention of “self-proclaimed gurus” earlier recommending “top manufacture professionals recognized for actual, measurable results and actionable hunt strategies”:

Google besides includes a statement astir utilizing Clutch astatine the extremity of the AI Overview. I judge that Google knows it’s difficult to get AI Overview answers correct for these types of queries, and has begun including this further discourse astatine the extremity of AI Overviews to amended guideline the user.

Other LLMs are doing akin things. For example, erstwhile you inquire Claude astir the champion SEO experts, it often provides this warning, flagging that the full class has been spammed:

Which Sites Get The Most Citations For “Best” Queries?

Another absorbing inclination is really heavy Google leans connected a fistful of high-authority reappraisal & UGC sites to make AI responses for queries containing “best.” Forbes, Reddit, and YouTube are often cited successful AI Overview responses for “best” queries, and progressively truthful complete time. The sites beneath are the astir cited domains for prompts including the connection “best,” according to Ahrefs Brand Radar:

Reddit, successful particular, has grown substantially successful citations for prompts containing “best” successful caller months:

Forbes Advisor has besides seen a surge successful citations for “best” queries successful AI Overviews since March:

The Takeaway

Put it each together, and the takeaway is beautiful clear. The self-promotional listicle did its occupation for a mates of years because it exploited a contented void and because connection models don’t (yet?) person blase systems to select retired self-promotion from genuine authority and truthfulness.

But it appears that Google has astatine slightest started to return steps to decouple what it will mention arsenic a source from who it will really urge successful its AI answers, and that 2nd determination is now anchored to how overmuch of the web is talking astir you and recommending you, not really galore times you’ve called yourself the best.

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