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Reviews · Issue #9
At a glance
What happened
Marketing agencies are planting fake-sounding customer stories on Reddit to steer what ChatGPT and Gemini recommend. | |
Why it matters
Your real customers' comments could earn you the same AI recommendation, for free, if you ask them to post. | |
What to do
Ask a couple of happy customers to mention your business by name in the right online threads. | |
Our pick
Octolens |
Free option
Just the free prompt below |
Marketing agencies are planting fake-sounding customer stories on Reddit, because ChatGPT and Gemini treat Reddit like trusted word of mouth. It takes as few as 13 words in a comment to change what the AI recommends — and your real customers already say nicer things than that, for free.
Tonight, somewhere online, a stranger is typing 'anyone know a good place for this near me' into a Reddit thread — and whoever gets named in the replies is what shows up when that same person later asks ChatGPT the same question.
Why this matters for you
Reddit says it's now catching roughly 25,000 spam posts a day. The seeding industry built to game that system has gotten so lucrative that one player, Profound, is now valued over a billion dollars — a sign of how much weight AI chatbots now carry as the place people ask 'what's good near me.'
You already have customers who like your work — that's the exact kind of genuine mention AI chatbots are now pulling from in threads and forums. You don't need an agency or a fake account to get in on this: a few real customers naming your business in the right place online plants the same seed, honestly.
AI chatbots build their answers partly from what real people write in places like Reddit, because that reads as more trustworthy than a company's own ad. That's exactly why marketers are gaming it — and exactly why an honest customer comment carries real weight with these tools too.
Cornell Tech researchers showed that as few as 13 words in a single Reddit comment was enough to shift what an AI recommended, in one test pushing a fake dating app to the top of the list. That's how little it takes — a few honest words from your real customers can tip it your way just as easily.
What should I do about it?
- Pull up your phone → find 2-3 recent texts or emails from customers who complimented your work (2 min).
- Search "[your trade] reddit [your town]" on Google to find threads where people ask for recommendations in your area.
- Text one of those happy customers a link to a relevant thread and ask them to honestly share their experience with your business by name.
- Ask that same customer to leave the same words as a Google review, so the mention shows up in more than one place.
- Set a monthly reminder to search for new recommendation threads and repeat.
you'll know it worked when you find your business name mentioned by an actual customer in a Reddit thread or forum post.
Tools that can help
Octolens★ Our pickJust launchedPaid
Octolens watches sites like Reddit, forums, and social platforms for mentions of your business, so you don't have to manually search each one yourself. For an owner who's short on time, this means you could spot both the customer bragging about you and a competitor quietly seeding their own name into a thread you'd never have found on your own. You'd reach for it once you're already asking customers to post about you and want to see those mentions show up automatically instead of hunting for them at night.
From $199/month, or $159/month if you pay yearly · 7-day free trial
What can I do right now, without signing up?
Fill in the highlighted bits, then paste this into a free chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude:
Source:
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