Good news for makers: Your Product Hunt launch actually helps with ChatGPT visibility

Hi folks

🎓 Just published my research on arXiv: "The Discovery Gap"
Empirically analyzed 112 ProductHunt startups launches to see if ChatGPT/Perplexity would recommend them.

TL;DR: ~99% recognition but only 3% discovery (30:1 gap)

But, the Good news!

Your PH launch performance actually helps with AI visibility
GEO optimization doesn't work (r = -0.10)
Reddit presence is the strongest predictor (r = +0.40)

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00912
Code: https://github.com/amit-psharma/discovery-gap-geo

If you launched 2025, your product might be in the dataset!