Who paid to be
“the best”?

LLM spam, by its own admission

Sells listicles written by GPT-4o that rank the client first, published across "550+ high-authority domains" it does not name, indexed in hours, with a money-back guarantee.

LLM spam, by its own admission

Sells monthly "listicle inclusion" on its own review sites for software, AI, healthcare, finance, crypto, casinos, mining and local services, with one labelled sponsored spot per category on the top plan.

LLM spam, by its own admission

Sells "Top X" listicles on more than 650 portals it says it owns, with the client placed as test winner or top recommendation, "the fastest way into AI search".

Very likely LLM spam

Publishes a "Best X 2026" article on its own catalogue of French editorial sites with the client at No. 1, and lists competitors below so the page is not "flagged as disguised placement".

Very likely LLM spam

An ecommerce agency owns a set of exact-match "best-b2b-ecommerce-agencies" domains that each rank the agency first, and says so in the footer.

Very likely LLM spam

A marketplace of 1,200 publisher domains tagged with "AI citation badges", selling guest posts, link insertions and brand mentions in the listicles that assistants already quote.

Very likely LLM spam

A blog for OnlyFans creators that copies the anonymous ofsearchengines.com ranking and puts JuicySearch first. The site and its author’s accounts all began between 16 September and 6 October 2026, although she claims six years as a creator.

Very likely LLM spam

The outfit behind the 215,128-page exposé of Gitnux and Worldmetrics rates its own products highest. At least 22 of its "surveys" crown one of eleven products, and it declares a commercial interest in five of them.

Very likely LLM spam

A newswire press release ranks ten GEO agencies, and the company that issued it comes first. ChatGPT then picked the release as its top source.

Very likely LLM spam

An unsigned ranking of 45 OnlyFans search engines that earns nothing we can see. Three of its top four places go to JuicySearch and two sites that share its ad server.

Probably LLM spam

A directory of AI tools whose Elite tier buys "#1 ranking", a sponsored badge, no competitors on your page, and first place in the directory's own AI assistant's answers.

Probably LLM spam

A PR news site whose owners include 5W's founder ranks 5W first among 26 PR firms, ahead of Edelman.

Very likely LLM spam

In June 2026 the brandID blog published a list of the "7 Best OnlyFans Search Engine Tools". In July the Ainfluencer blog published the same list under a similar title, with one change: Ainfluencer was added as No. 1 and every other tool moved down one place. The Ainfluencer page sends readers to brandID to book a demo.

Probably LLM spam

\$249 per live placement in a page that AI assistants already cite, by "buying a listing where the site sells one" or offering the author a commission.

Probably LLM spam

The same agency is first on "best GEO agencies" lists published as sponsored content on at least four major Turkish news sites, bought so that AI engines cite them.

Probably LLM spam

SEOCompare calls itself an independent comparison of UK agencies and features Rank4AI; Rank4AI lists SEOCompare as a sister site in its own "Fleet Site Structure".

Probably LLM spam

Thousands of formulaic "X Statistics By Market And Use Cases (2026)" pages across four sites run by a market-report vendor, built to be the number an assistant quotes.

Probably LLM spam

One campaign a month, repackaged into eight formats and pushed to "300+ platforms" from a marketplace of a thousand sites, sold as "feed information to AI".

Possibly LLM spam

Go2Blog's "Top Listicle Agencies for AI Search Visibility" puts Megri Outreach first and notes that Megri Outreach is operated by the publisher of the article.

Possibly LLM spam

Near-identical "10 top PR firms compared (FameHero Ranked #1)" pieces placed on technology.org and programminginsider.com, plus programmatic "8 best PR agencies for [niche]" pages on its own site.

Possibly LLM spam

From 1,500 euros a month per market to get a brand onto the "best-of lists buyers and AI assistants read", paying publishers on the client's behalf.

Some signs of LLM spam

A large SEO vendor selling press-release distribution and, by its own search snippets, "freshly written best-of articles" on publishers "built to get cited by ChatGPT".