When a buyer asks ChatGPT "which are the best X companies?", the answer is often not written from scratch. The engine searches the web, reads the pages it finds and builds the answer from them. A large share of these pages are "best X" list articles. In this article, we explain how to find which lists you need to be on and how to reach the list owner.
Why do list pages matter so much?
Ahrefs asked ChatGPT 750 questions in the software, product and agency categories and classified the pages cited in the answers one by one. According to the study, 43.8 percent of the cited links were "best X" blog lists. In other words, in this study almost half of the pages ChatGPT cited were lists of this kind.
The takeaway is simple: if your competitors are on these lists and you are not, the engine will most likely mention them. No matter how much you fix your own site, this gap does not close on its own. For a wider look at where the engine collects its information, see our article Where does ChatGPT get its information?
Which lists do you need to be on?
Not every "best" list has the same value. What matters to you are the lists the engines actually cite for the questions your buyers ask. To find them:
- Write down the questions your buyers would type. Your brand name should not appear in them.
- Ask these questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity separately.
- Note the pages shown as sources in the answers.
- Pick out which of these pages are lists of the "best X", "X companies" or "10 options for X" kind.
- Check whether your brand is on each list.
A single question and a single try can be misleading. The answers change every time, and so do the sources. Running the same question list several times and focusing on the pages that come up most often gives a sounder result.
What types of list pages are there?
Sorting the lists you find by type decides what you write and to whom. There are three common types:
- Independent publication or blog lists. An industry site, news site or blog compiles the companies in its field.
- Lists on a company's own site. The company ranks the options in its own category and often puts itself on the list.
- Guide and directory pages. Pages where companies are added by applying or registering.
Do not underestimate the second type. According to the same Ahrefs study, in the software category, when a company's own site was recommended, a list article that promoted that company also appeared in more than a third of ChatGPT answers. This shows that an honest, useful comparison article on your own site can be valuable. Describe your competitors fairly when you write it. A list that only praises you does not earn the reader's trust either.
How do you reach the list owner?
The most direct way to get on a list is to reach the person who wrote the page or the page owner. To do that:
- Look for a contact option on the page. It could be an author name, a contact page, an email address or a "contact us" form.
- Write in the page's language. Send a Turkish email to a Turkish list and an English email to an English list.
- Keep it short. Say in a few sentences what you do, who you serve and why you fit the list.
- Give information that can be verified. Add a link to your service page, pricing page or references page, so the page owner can check the information themselves.
- Do not make claims you cannot back up. Use information such as awards, customer counts or rankings only if you have proof.
The list owner may not reply to your email. Some never update their list. So instead of depending on a single list, it makes more sense to reach out to several lists one after another.
Why are up-to-date lists more valuable?
Ahrefs also examined 1,100 blog lists used as sources. 79.1 percent of them had last been updated in 2025. 26 percent had been updated within the last two months. Also, articles updated after publication (57.1 percent) outnumbered those that were published and then left as they were.
These numbers tell you two things. First, it makes more sense to reach out to lists that are updated regularly, because the owner is still paying attention to the page. Second, if you publish your own comparison article, you need to keep it up to date as well.
How do you prepare your own comparison article?
While you wait to get on someone else's list, publishing a comparison article on your own site is also an option. When you do, pay attention to these points:
- Build the title from the sentence a buyer would search for, such as "Best X companies" or "What to look for when choosing X?".
- Describe every option by the same criteria: who it suits, what it does well, where it operates.
- If you put yourself on the list, say so clearly. The reader should know who the article belongs to.
- Write only information about competitors that you can verify. Price or feature claims change often, and outdated information damages trust.
- Review the article at set intervals and show the update date on the page.
Which lists should you stay away from?
The same study found that 35 percent of the cited lists were published on low-authority domains. The researcher also notes that many of these were questionable. If you are asked to pay to get on a list, or the page looks like it was set up only to sell links, be careful. Do not decide without checking whether the page really comes up as a source in the engines' answers.
How long does it take to see results?
There is no fixed time for this. The list owner replying, updating the page and the engines reading the page again each take time. No tool or agency can guarantee that you will get on a list, or that the engine will mention you after you do.
What you can do is keep a note of which lists you reached out to and measure regularly with the same question list. Only repeated measurement shows you in which engine and on which question your visibility changed.
How does AIShortlist make this easier?
The AIShortlist Sources screen lists all the domains the engines cite as sources. It marks which of them are "best X" list pages and shows which lists your brand is missing from.
For each list page, you get an action plan in one click. The plan reads the page itself and gives you: the page type, whether your brand is actually on the page, the contact options on the page, the information to send from your own site and an email draft in the page's language. The free trial includes action plans for 2 list pages. If you want to try it, you can create a free account. No card details are required.