Show HN: I built a tool to make AI recommend you (and I'm conflicted about it)

[mrayushsoni]

So I've been obsessed with a weird question for the past 6 months, what happens to SEO when everyone starts asking ChatGPT for recommendations instead of Googling?

The answer, apparently, is chaos. And maybe opportunity?

I built FirstClick because I noticed something strange. My previous startup was getting zero traffic from AI assistants, but our competitor (objectively worse product, sorry not sorry) was getting mentioned by Claude and Perplexity constantly.

It drove me crazy. So I reverse engineered why. Turns out there's a whole new game being played and most founders don't even know it exists yet.

FirstClick does three things 1. Writes BOFU comparison content automatically ("X vs Y", "Best alternatives to Z") 2. Optimizes it specifically for AI citation, not just Google 3. Tracks when/if AI models actually recommend you

The uncomfortable part is that I'm essentially helping companies game AI search results. Same way SEO gamed Google for 20 years. Is this... good? Bad? Inevitable?

I go back and forth honestly. Part of me thinks this is just the new reality founders need to adapt to. Part of me wonders if we're all just training AI on increasingly optimized marketing content until nothing means anything anymore.

Anyway, it works pretty well. Happy to answer questions about how AI models decide what to recommend, the technical implementation, or why I probably should have just become a photographer.

[iamkrishsoni]

This is really interesting work. The shift from Google SEO to AI-driven recommendations is something I’ve been thinking about too, and it’s refreshing to see a tool actually tackling it head-on.

[oyerakesh]

AI driven search is definitely the next big shift and it’s only going to accelerate over the next years. Most marketing teams still haven’t figured out how to show up in AI search results. I’ll share your tool with my team... looks very relevant and useful.

[mrayushsoni]

There is a lot more to come in this, it's good to get in early

[admtal]

I tried to start a trial, and it redirected me to localhost

am I gonna be charged?

Nvm, I was able to cancel, but heads up about the localhost thing, I could not access the dashboard

[mrayushsoni]

My bad, I broke something in a recent update, it should be all good now, maybe give it a try again? I've live chat support there in case you run into any issue again.

Thanks for flagging it!

[abhishek_soni]

It's going to be lots of ai slop soon, but it's inevitable, so firstclick seems like a step in right direction. I will definitely give it a try.

Would love to know your thoughts on how things will evolve for search moving forward in the ai slop world

[transitivebs]

ai ayushhhhh