How to Get Your Brand on Best-Of Lists (and Cited by AI).

To get your brand on best-of lists, give editors a product they can test, the data they need to compare it, and a way to earn on it through an affiliate program on the networks they already use. Most "best X" lists are funded by affiliate commissions, so inclusion usually comes down to three things: the product is good, the editor can verify it, and the publisher can monetize the link without extra work.

This guide is for marketing leads and owners at brands that sell a physical product, software or a service people compare before buying. It covers the business models behind lists, how editors decide, how to pitch, the FTC rules on paid placements, and how list inclusion now feeds the answers in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. We run affiliate programs for brands and we also publish on these networks, so we see both sides of the pitch.

Why best-of lists matter more now.

A best-of list used to matter for the clicks it sent. It still does, but it now also shapes what AI assistants say when someone asks "what is the best X." Those assistants pull from web pages, and roundups are the page type they pull from most.

That figure comes from an Ahrefs study of best lists in ChatGPT, which looked at software, product and agency prompts. The same study found best lists were slightly more prominent in Google's AI Overviews than in ChatGPT for these queries, that 79.1% of dated lists it checked had been updated in 2025, and that about 35% of cited lists sat on low-authority domains. Freshness matters, and authority matters less than people assume.

Where those lists come from also matters. Seer Interactive found in February 2025 that 87% of ChatGPT search citations matched Bing's top organic results for the same question, against 56% for Google. Seer called its sample of 500+ citations directional, and AI products change often, but the practical point holds: a list that ranks on Bing is a list ChatGPT is likely to read. A separate Ahrefs analysis of ChatGPT's top 1,000 cited pages (October 2025) found only 32.3% were pages a marketer could realistically pitch or influence, so the lists you can get onto are a small, valuable slice. Our AI search optimization work starts by finding exactly which pages the assistants cite for your category.

The business models behind best-of lists.

Every list is paid for somehow. Knowing how tells you what the publisher needs from you and what you can and cannot ask for.

Directories publish their own rules, and they are worth reading. Clutch's help center says its Leaders Matrices use Clutch rank alone, while directories sort by sponsorship and then rank. G2 says Grid placement is set by its algorithm and cannot be changed manually, including by its own staff. In both cases the lever you control is reviews from real customers.

Vendor lists are the odd one out. The Ahrefs study found that 67.6% of 250 "best X software" Google results included a list where the publisher ranked itself first. You will rarely get onto a competitor's list, but you can publish an honest comparison of your own category, and AI assistants do read those.

How editors choose products.

From the publisher side, a roundup is a page with a job: rank for a query, earn the reader's trust and convert. Editors pick products that let the page do all three. In practice that means:

• The product is a real contender. Editors start from what readers already search for and buy, then test the leaders and a few challengers. A brand with no reviews, no search demand and no retail presence is a hard sell for the top slot, though it can win a niche slot like "best budget" or "best for small spaces."
• It can be verified. Google's guidance on writing high quality reviews asks for evidence of first-hand use, such as original photos and measurements, and Google has said the same advice applies to ranked lists. Editors who want to rank need to touch the product.
• The specs are clear and consistent. Comparison tables need dimensions, weights, materials, pricing, warranty terms and plan limits. If your site, Amazon listing and spec sheet disagree, the editor either guesses or skips you.
• The link pays. If the publisher is on Amazon Associates, Impact, CJ, Awin, Rakuten or PartnerStack and you are not, you are asking them to give up a commission to include you. Many will still do it for a clearly better product, but it is friction.
• It will be in stock and stable. A pick that sells out, changes formula or gets discontinued breaks the page. Editors favor brands with steady availability and a contact who answers.

How to pitch a best-of list.

Start with the lists that matter, not the ones that answer cold email. Search your category queries on Google and Bing, then ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the same questions and note which pages they cite. The overlap is your target list.

Commission rate matters less than brands think for editorial picks, but it does matter for tie-breakers and for the commerce team that decides which retailer link to use. Check where you stand against your vertical in our breakdown of affiliate commission rates by industry.

FTC disclosure rules for paid placements.

Paying for placement is legal. Hiding it is not. The FTC's Endorsement Guides, revised in 2023, require disclosure of any material connection between a brand and the person or site recommending it, and the FTC's Endorsement Guides FAQ says affiliate commissions count. The disclosure should sit close to the recommendation, and the FAQ notes that a disclosure reached only through a hyperlink is easy to miss and is not clear and conspicuous.

Two more rules apply to brands directly. The FTC's final rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, announced in August 2024, bars a business from presenting a site it controls as an independent reviewer of a category that includes its own products, and bars paying for reviews conditioned on a positive or negative sentiment. The rule lets the FTC seek civil penalties against knowing violators. On the search side, Google asks that paid links be marked with rel="sponsored", which means a paid placement passes no ranking value to your site.

What that means for a brand: you can give samples, run an affiliate program and buy clearly labelled sponsored slots. You should not pay for a ranking that is presented as independent, ask a publisher to drop a disclosure, or condition samples on a positive verdict. Put these rules in your affiliate terms so publishers in your program know them too.

Why paid placement on low-quality lists can hurt.

Your inbox will fill with offers to "get featured" on top 10 lists for a fee. Some are fine sponsored placements on real publications. Many are pages built to sell slots. Before paying, check three things: does the page rank for its target query on Google and Bing today, does any AI assistant cite it, and does it show any sign of testing. If the answer to all three is no, the page has nothing to sell you.

• Search engines discount it. Google's spam policies cover link schemes and site reputation abuse, where third-party pages ride a host site's ranking signals. Google enforces site reputation abuse with manual actions, which can drop a whole section of a host site from results.
• The link has no SEO value by design. A properly marked sponsored link passes no ranking credit. An unmarked paid link is a link scheme risk for you and the publisher.
• It can taint the AI answer. Assistants summarize what pages say. A thin list that calls you "best" next to weak or dubious brands puts you in that company.
• Readers notice. Lists with no testing, stock photos and identical blurbs convert poorly. In our experience, brands that track sales from these placements usually find little to track.

Mistakes agencies see brands make.

• Pitching every list that appears in search instead of the 20 or so that rank and get cited.
• Running the affiliate program only on a network the major review publishers do not use.
• Sending samples with conditions attached, or asking to approve copy before publishing.
• Letting specs, prices and photos drift between the brand site, Amazon and retail partners.
• Ignoring Bing, even though ChatGPT search citations track Bing results closely in Seer's study.
• Seeding forums with staff posts or paying for sentiment-conditioned reviews, which the FTC reviews rule prohibits.
• Treating a list placement as done. Lists get refreshed, and brands that stop sending updates drop out.

What to measure.

If you are a smaller brand.

Under a few million in revenue, aim for the niche slots: "best for small apartments," "best budget," "best for beginners." Editors need challengers for those, and the bar is a product that clearly wins one use case. Run your affiliate program on Amazon Associates if you sell there, or on one network that your target publishers use, and spend your time on samples and a clean spec sheet rather than paid placements.

When to bring in help.

You can do this in-house if someone owns it every week: the target list, the pitches, the samples and the affiliate program. Help makes sense when the affiliate program is not set up or not on the right networks, when you need to know which pages AI assistants cite for your category, or when nobody has time to keep up with list refreshes.