Ternith Research
What does AI actually do when it picks a brand?
Pre-registered studies run on the same measurement instrument behind every diagnosis. Every number is committed before we look at the data.
Does Reddit actually get brands recommended by AI?
When Reddit pages were in what the AI read before answering, the brands it recommended barely changed — a near-null +0.0024 (95% CI −0.075 to +0.079, illustrative), and Reddit was in the room only 4.04% of the time. That is an association from an underpowered slice: the evidence cannot find a “do Reddit” lever to pull, which is not the same as proving Reddit does nothing.
We re-analyzed 8,160 call-and-brand rows to ask whether Reddit being in what an AI reads is linked to the brands it recommends. Reddit was in the mix in only 4.04% of calls, and where it was, recommendations barely moved — a near-null +0.0024. On this evidence, “do Reddit” isn’t a lever you can act on.
Cites Suganthan · Ahrefs
- How does ChatGPT decide which brands to name?
We logged every URL ChatGPT fetched before naming a skincare brand, registered one number before looking, and found that 88.6% of what the model read was third-party pages — not brand sites. One word in the question swings the own-site-fetch rate by a factor of ten.