Analyst and publisher placement
Source: Goodie, The Most Cited B2B SaaS Domains in AI Search. 5.7 million citation links analysed across B2B SaaS prompts.
What we can actually evidence.
How these are measured
- SaaS brands served:
- n = 30 SaaS brands. company inception to August 2026. Count of distinct SaaS companies under a signed advisory agreement. Excludes one-off audits, workshops and prospect calls.
- Years in-house experience:
- n = 1 founding team. 2015 to 2026. Cumulative years spent in salaried, in-house growth and marketing roles at SaaS companies before founding Surge45.
- AI assistants tracked:
- n = 6 assistants. current monitoring coverage. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Grok, plus the AI Overviews and AI Mode surfaces inside Google Search. A coverage fact, not a performance claim.
- Growth pillars, one system:
- n = 4 pillars. current advisory model. Discover, Convert, Attribute and Grow. A structural fact about how the advisory is organised, not a performance claim.
Why publisher and analyst coverage carries so far
Publisher round-ups and analyst evaluations are pre-digested comparison content: a named author has already assessed a category and reached conclusions. An assistant asked to compare tools can lift that assessment nearly whole, with attribution to a source a buyer recognises.
The half-life is unusually long. A best-of round-up published two years ago is still retrieved and still cited, which changes the economics: a single placement continues paying out long after a campaign would have stopped.
The Google-side assistants lean on this category harder than ChatGPT does, favouring listicle and affiliate-style content, where ChatGPT leans harder on user-generated sources. That split is why a single-platform programme produces a lopsided source mix.
What the programme actually involves
Identify the round-ups that already get cited
For any category there is a small set of publisher pages that assistants return to. That set is findable, and it is where the effort belongs.
Get considered for inclusion
Most best-of round-ups are periodically refreshed by an editor who needs to know you exist and needs the specifics to evaluate you. Much of this is unglamorous outreach done properly.
Analyst relations, proportionate to stage
Full analyst programmes are expensive and not right for every company. We are explicit about the threshold, and about what the cheaper category-inclusion routes actually get you.
Correct and refresh existing coverage
Being in a round-up with two-year-old pricing is a live problem, because that is what gets quoted. Getting existing coverage updated is faster and cheaper than earning new coverage.
Earn coverage with something worth covering
Original data, a genuine product first, a real customer outcome. Editorial coverage follows substance, and we would rather help you find the substance than pitch without it.
What we will not do, and why
This is the part of AI search where buying the outcome is cheapest, most tempting and most damaging. The exposure sits with your brand, not with your advisor, so we would rather be explicit before you buy than after.
We do not buy editorial coverage presented as earned
Paid placement dressed as editorial misleads your buyers and, increasingly, gets labelled as such by the publishers themselves. Where paid distribution is right, it is disclosed and reported as paid.
Analyst programmes are expensive and often premature
For most companies below a certain scale the money is better spent elsewhere. We will say when that is the case rather than selling the line item.
Analyst and publisher placement questions
Citations come from more than one place
Review platform strategy
G2, Capterra and GetApp all sit in the ten most-cited domains for B2B SaaS prompts, with G2 second only to Reddit. Assistants treat review marketplaces as structured, comparable, third-party evidence, which is precisely what a vendor's own site cannot be.
Learn moreReddit and community presence
Reddit is the most-cited domain in the analysed set, ahead of G2. Assistants, and ChatGPT in particular, lean on user-generated discussion for software recommendations, because it is where people say what a product is actually like to use.
Learn moreYouTube and video
YouTube is in the ten most-cited domains for B2B SaaS prompts, and it is the one most SaaS marketing teams treat as a brand channel rather than a citation source.
Learn more