A $50 site of 50,000 fake stats got cited by ChatGPT for 7 months
metehan777 · x · 2026-10-16
Metehan Yesilyurt of Peec AI ran an experiment: a $50 site filled with 50,000 entirely made-up statistics. Seven months later, Google had deindexed it, but ChatGPT kept citing it, driving 10,000+ AI sessions and earning 330+ referring domains including Shopify, Bluehost, and DHL — the fake numbers even landed in an academic paper and a bank's investment research.
Key takeaways:
- LLMs writing time-sensitive content hunt for seemingly reliable stats, making statistics prime GEO targets;
- The opportunity extends beyond appearing in AI answers to downstream reuse in decks and websites;
- The honest playbook: one claim per sentence, each stat with a source and year — the format most likely to get cited.
He notes it's experimental, but the results show AI search citation is far more fragile than Google's.
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