{
  "id": 5159566,
  "title": "Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/02/three-sites-made-215-128-best-software-pages-for-ai-perplexity-cites-5159566",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-02T13:59:59.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Hacker News Best",
    "slug": "hacker-news-best",
    "url": "https://trellner.com/reports/manufactured-sources-behind-ai-recommendations/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Three sites have generated 215,128 machine-generated \"best software\" pages for 380 software categories, with 751 of the 2,055 cited domains not appearing in the top million, according to a report by Perplexity. These sites, including guideflow.com, wifitalents.com, and worldmetrics.org, were all registered between December 2023 and May 2024 and share a common Cloudflare nameserver pair and identical page templates. Each site has a blog containing six posts, six of which are about the other brands in the set. The three brands also offer custom market research, ready-made reports, and vendor selection services, all related to the generated Best Lists.",
  "summary": "Article URL: https://trellner.com/reports/manufactured-sources-behind-ai-recommendations/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536375 Points: 240 # Comments: 110",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Hacker News",
        "title": "Three sites made 215,128 \"best software\" pages for AI. Perplexity cites them",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/02/three-sites-made-215-128-best-software-pages-for-ai-perplexity-cites",
        "published": "2026-09-02T13:59:59.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}