Best places to list your software so AI assistants recommend it
By Roshan, founder of SearchMaxx - - updated - 8 min read
AI assistants recommend software they see described on pages they trust, and most of those pages are not yours. The places worth your time first are G2 and Capterra, Reddit, the comparison articles that already rank for your category, and, for developer tools, GitHub awesome lists and Hacker News. Wikipedia helps a lot, but only once independent press has already written about you.
Why AI engines cite other people's pages
When ChatGPT or Perplexity answers "what is the best invoicing app for freelancers?", it searches the web and summarizes what it finds. Your homepage is one voice. A review site, a forum thread and a "best of" article are three more, and they look independent.
Two pieces of published data show this:
- Third-party sites dominate citations. Peec AI looked at about 30 million sources cited by AI engines in the US in March 2026. Reddit and YouTube were in the top five cited domains on all five engines it checked. Wikipedia was in the top five for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. G2 was in Perplexity's top five. (Peec AI: most cited domains by engine)
- Mentions matter more than links. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that branded web mentions had the strongest link to appearing in Google's AI Overviews, a correlation of 0.664. Backlinks scored 0.218. Ahrefs notes that correlation is not causation. (Ahrefs: brand visibility in AI Overviews)
So the job is to be described accurately, by others, on the pages AI engines already read.
The places compared
| Place | Best for | Cost to list (as of October 2026) | Effort | Main catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| G2 | B2B software with paying customers | Free to claim a profile | Medium | Needs real reviews to matter |
| Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice | SMB software | Free listing, paid clicks optional | Medium | Paid placements sit above free ones |
| Any product with a real user community | Free | High, ongoing | Self-promotion gets removed or banned | |
| Comparison articles | Every category | Free to pitch | Medium | Authors owe you nothing |
| Product Hunt | Launches and major releases | Free | High for one day | Short-lived traffic |
| Hacker News (Show HN) | Developer and technical tools | Free | Low to post | Must be usable without a signup wall |
| GitHub awesome lists | Developer tools, open source | Free | Low | Maintainers reject weak or promotional entries |
| AlternativeTo | Consumer and prosumer software | Free, optional paid priority review | Low | Many submissions declined |
| Wikipedia and Wikidata | Companies with independent press coverage | Free | High | Strict notability and conflict-of-interest rules |
G2
What it is. A B2B software review site, and one of the five domains Perplexity cites most often.
Best for. B2B software with customers willing to write reviews.
How to get on it. Search g2.com for your product. If a profile exists, click the "Unclaimed" box at the top and follow the prompts. If none exists, add your product through G2's new product form. Claiming is free. (G2: unclaimed profiles) Then ask real customers for reviews. Email the ones who already told you they like the product.
Downsides. An empty profile gives AI engines little to quote. The value is in the reviews, and those take months to collect honestly. G2 also sells paid tiers, which you do not need to get listed.
Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice
What it is. Three linked review and comparison sites. Gartner has owned them since 2015. In January 2026, G2 announced an agreement to buy all three (G2). Vendors can list for free and pay per click for sponsored positions (Wikipedia: Capterra).
Best for. Software sold to small and mid-size businesses, where buyers compare on these sites.
How to get on it. Request a free listing through Capterra's vendor sign-up, then collect reviews the same way as on G2. We could not load Capterra's vendor pages to confirm current terms after the G2 deal, so check them when you apply.
Downsides. Sponsored listings sit above free ones on category pages. Do not pay for clicks just to be "seen by AI". Reviews are what get quoted.
What it is. The most cited domain overall in Peec's dataset, and in the top five on every engine it checked. (Peec AI)
Best for. Products with users who already talk about the problem in specific subreddits.
How to get on it. Reddit's rules say: "Participate authentically in communities where you have a personal interest, and do not spam or engage in disruptive behaviors (including content manipulation)." (Reddit Rules) In practice:
- Find threads where people ask for tools in your category. Search
site:reddit.com best [category]on Google. - Answer the question fully, including other good options. Say you work on your product when you mention it.
- Read each subreddit's own rules first. Many ban self-promotion outright.
Downsides. Slow, manual, and easy to get wrong. Fake accounts and paid upvotes break Reddit's rules and get threads removed, which also removes them from what AI engines can cite.
Comparison and "best of" articles
What it is. Articles like "best invoicing apps for freelancers" on review blogs, tech publications and other vendors' sites. These are the pages AI engines summarize when asked for a recommendation.
Best for. Every software company. This is often the highest-value item on the list.
How to get on it.
- Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google your category question. Write down every page they cite.
- For each article that leaves you out, find the author and email them. Give one paragraph on what your product does, who it is for, and the price. Offer a free account for testing.
- For articles that include you with wrong facts, send a correction. Outdated pricing is common.
Downsides. Authors owe you nothing, and some ask for payment. Paid placements are usually labeled, and we do not recommend them.
Product Hunt
What it is. A daily leaderboard of new products. It is free, and makers are encouraged to post their own products. Company accounts are not allowed. The guide's main rule: "you cannot ask people directly to upvote your product." You can relaunch when you have a significant new version. (Product Hunt launch guide)
Best for. New products, or big releases of existing ones.
How to get on it. Post from a personal maker account. Product Hunt suggests 12:01 am Pacific Time. Ask your users to visit and comment, not to upvote.
Downsides. Traffic is concentrated in one day. The lasting value is a permanent product page with a description and comments.
Hacker News (Show HN)
What it is. A Show HN post is "for something you've made that other people can play with." Landing pages and sign-up pages are off topic, and you should not ask friends to upvote or comment. (Show HN guidelines)
Best for. Developer tools, open source and technical products people can try right away.
How to get on it. Post a title starting with "Show HN:", link to something usable, and stay in the thread to answer questions.
Downsides. If your product needs a sales call or a signup to try, it does not belong here.
GitHub awesome lists
What it is. Curated lists on GitHub, such as "awesome-[topic]", that developers and AI engines use as reference lists.
Best for. Developer tools and open source projects.
How to get on it. Find the list for your category and read its contributing file. The main awesome list's guidelines ask for entries formatted as - [Name](link) - Description., with an objective description rather than marketing copy, added at the bottom of the right category, and only for maintained projects with documentation. (sindresorhus/awesome PR template) Open one pull request per list.
Downsides. Maintainers reject promotional or low-quality entries. A closed-source SaaS product is a poor fit for most lists.
AlternativeTo
What it is. A site where users find alternatives to software they know. Anyone with a verified account can suggest an app. Admins review every submission and decline many. An optional one-time payment buys priority review, but not approval or ranking. (AlternativeTo FAQ)
Best for. Products that replace a well-known tool.
Downsides. Services, thin wrappers around third-party AI models, and unreleased apps are likely to be declined. (AlternativeTo FAQ)
Wikipedia and Wikidata
What it is. Wikipedia is in the top five cited domains for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. (Peec AI) It is also the hardest to get into.
The notability bar. A company needs "significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject." Press releases, sponsored content, routine coverage of hires or product launches, and your own material do not count. (Wikipedia: notability of organizations)
Conflict of interest. Writing about your own company is "strongly discouraged". If you have a conflict, disclose it and propose changes on the article's talk page instead of editing directly. Paid editors must say who pays them. (Wikipedia: conflict of interest)
Wikidata. Wikidata is a separate database with a lower bar. An item qualifies if it refers to "a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity" backed by "serious and publicly available references", among other criteria. (Wikidata: notability) An accurate item with your official website, founding date and industry is reasonable once you have public references.
Downsides. If you do not meet notability, a draft will be deleted. Earn press first.
Industry directories
Most fields have their own lists: integration marketplaces, partner directories, association member lists, and app stores for the tools you plug into, such as Slack or Shopify. Two rules for picking them:
- Check if AI engines cite it. Ask your category question in Perplexity and see which directories come up.
- Skip paid link directories. A page that exists only to sell listings is not what AI engines quote.
Where to start
If you have a week, do these in order: claim G2, request a Capterra listing, pull the list of pages AI engines cite for your category, and pitch the authors of the top five. Then add the community sites that match your product.
None of this helps if AI crawlers cannot read your own site when they follow those mentions back. Run the free check to see what they get, or read which AI crawlers to allow in robots.txt.
Want this done for your site?
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