He published 50,000 fake stats; ChatGPT cited them and 330+ domains followed
metehan777 · x · 2026-10-07
GEO researcher Metehan Yesilyurt shares a 7-month experiment: he launched a site with 50,000 statistics — all fabricated — to test how AI search ecosystems propagate them:
- Google deindexed the site, but ChatGPT still cites it, driving 10,000+ AI sessions over 7 months.
- The site earned 330+ referring domains including Shopify, Bluehost and DHL.
- The fake numbers ended up in an academic paper and a bank's investment research.
He calls the mechanism "citation laundering": on day one a fake stat is a random number on a brand-new domain with zero authority; once a paper cites it, then a bank, the next person finds a stat with sources cited by serious institutions. The number never became true — it just became credible. As more teams write time-sensitive content with LLMs that hunt for reliable-looking data, the contamination self-reinforces.
Related event: 50K Fake Stats Made for $50 Cited 72K Times by ChatGPT(2 posts)→
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