Forget SEO: Spammers Push 'AI‑Engine Optimization' by Flooding Reddit to Shape AI Search
With AI taking over the web search experience, marketers and scammers are eager to game the system. Moderators say people are flooding Reddit with fake posts designed to influence AI search results, creating skewed responses and disrupting the flow of conversation in specific subreddits.
Agencies now run "AI‑engine optimization" campaigns that aim to shape AI answers rather than just classic search rankings, as many people have switched to AI chatbots for solutions rather than traditional search. Through these campaigns, brands use automated accounts to promote products and services in Reddit discussions. AI systems then collect and summarize this information, as Reddit has become a source of information for AI answers from tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews, which often quote or reference Reddit threads as evidence of what "people online" think.
In practice, one account may post a leading question about peptides, financial tools, or AI apps; then...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to extremetech.com. To see the full text click HERE
