When someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a project management tool, which products show up in the response? And more importantly for startup founders: will their newly launched product ever appear? This research set out to answer these questions. I randomly selected 112 startups from the top 500 products featured on the 2025 Product Hunt leaderboard and tested each one across 2,240 queries to two different large language models: ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini) and Perplexity (sonar with web search). The results were striking. When users asked about products by name, both LLMs recognized them almost perfectly: 99.4% for ChatGPT and 94.3% for Perplexity. But when users asked discovery-style questions like "What are the best AI tools launched this year?" the success rates collapsed to 3.32% and 8.29% respectively. That's a gap of 30-to-1 for ChatGPT. Perhaps the most surprising finding was that Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the practice of optimizing website content for AI visibility, showed no correlation with actual discovery rates. Products with high GEO scores were no more likely to appear in organic queries than products with low scores. What did matter? For Perplexity, traditional SEO signals like referring domains (r = +0.319, p < 0.001) and Product Hunt ranking (r = -0.286, p = 0.002) predicted visibility. After cleaning the Reddit data for false positives, community presence also emerged as significant (r = +0.395, p = 0.002). The practical takeaway is counterintuitive: don't optimize for AI discovery directly. Instead, build the SEO foundation first and LLM visibility will follow.

翻译：当用户向ChatGPT询问推荐项目管理工具时，哪些产品会出现在回复中？对于初创公司创始人而言更重要的问题是：他们新发布的产品是否会出现？本研究旨在回答这些问题。我从2025年Product Hunt排行榜前500名产品中随机选取了112家初创公司，通过2,240次查询对两个不同的大语言模型进行测试：ChatGPT（gpt-4o-mini）和Perplexity（支持网络搜索的sonar模型）。结果令人震惊。当用户按产品名称询问时，两个LLM的识别准确率近乎完美：ChatGPT达99.4%，Perplexity达94.3%。但当用户提出发现式问题（如“今年发布的最佳AI工具有哪些？”）时，成功率分别骤降至3.32%和8.29%——ChatGPT存在30倍的差距。最令人意外的发现或许是：为提升AI可见度而优化网站内容的生成引擎优化（GEO）实践，与实际发现率并无相关性。高GEO评分产品在有机查询中的出现概率并未高于低评分产品。真正的影响因素是什么？对于Perplexity，传统SEO信号如引用域数量（r = +0.319, p < 0.001）和Product Hunt排名（r = -0.286, p = 0.002）能预测可见度。在剔除Reddit数据的误报后，社区活跃度也呈现显著相关性（r = +0.395, p = 0.002）。实践启示与直觉相悖：不要直接为AI发现进行优化。相反，应先夯实SEO基础，LLM可见度将随之提升。