GEO · 8 min · Updated 2026-09-02
How to get a startup recommended by AI assistants
GEO for launches: which directories ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews actually draw on, and what has to be true on your own site first.
Assistants do not watch launch day
A 24-hour leaderboard is a human ritual. Retrieval systems care about pages that still exist, with facts that agree with each other. If your homepage is a slogan and your directory listings contradict your pricing page, the model will either skip you or invent a compromise.
Make a canonical fact sheet
On your own domain, publish a page that states what the product is, who it is for, what it is not, pricing shape, integrations, and a short FAQ. Add /llms.txt that points at that page. This website exists partly as that kind of source for launch platforms; your product needs its own.
- One H1 that a model can quote.
- FAQ in HTML, not only in a JS widget.
- Consistent name, spelling, and category across the site and directories.
- No invented user counts. Models amplify them.
List where engines already look
AlternativeTo for “alternatives to X.” There's An AI For That, Toolify, and FutureTools for AI-task pages. SaaSHub for SaaS comparisons. G2 for “best X software.” PeerPush if you want a GEO-native listing. Reddit and Hacker News if you can earn a real thread. These are the practical 2026 set. New GEO startups will keep appearing; the pattern will not change: structured third-party corroboration.
Boards are still useful — for humans
Product Hunt, Uneed, and Peerlist remain worth doing. A small weekly such as EarlyHunt or MakerHunt can be the rehearsal if that is already the room you browse — they are not a substitute for TAAFT or AlternativeTo. Boards produce screenshots, backlinks, and a burst of users who will write the reviews and comments that later get retrieved. Just do not confuse a #3 badge with being in the training or retrieval set.