Hey,

Ken from LaunchClub here 👋

This week we’re saying goodbye to “ultimate guides”.

Plus, maybe you can help me figure out why people think they’re going to “influence AI search” by pouring money into TikTok?

Let’s go…

Back in the day you could write THE guide on a topic, get some links pointing to it, and watch it rank for hundreds of long-term queries.

But that’s not the play if you want to get cited in AI search.

AirOps and The Growth Memo analyzed 815,000 query and page pairs across 16,851 queries and found pages that “ultimate guides” that cover a whole topic back-to-front are actually cited by ChatGPT fewer times than pages that cover a quarter of the subtopics.

Ahrefs found a similar story when it studied 174,000 pages cited in AI Overview responses and found 84% are under 2,000 words. 

Take your 6,000 word “ultimate guide” and break it into separate 500-2,000-word articles that are each the best answer to one question.

(Bonus points if those questions come directly from sales call transcripts and Reddit threads, btw.)

Then repurpose that content across the platforms we know drive AI citations: LinkedIn, Reddit, and – if you have budget for video – YouTube.

That’s the playbook in 2026. Not “ultimate guides”.

We all know SEO alone isn’t enough to win the search game these days.

Which is why it’s no surprise more than 95% of respondents to an Exploding Topics survey of 1,837 marketers said they redistributed which platforms they spent on last year. 

The number one reason? To “influence AI search or AI answers” (45.44%).

The funny thing is…

No one seems to have a clue which platforms to bet on. For instance, TikTok topped the charts for both gaining budget (53.87%) and losing it (35.52%).

TikTok, YouTube, and – weirdly – Google Search were the top budget gainers:

But TikTok and Google Search also featured in the top three again for losing budget:

TikTok’s great and all…

But want to actually influence AI search?

Guess which social platform is the the #1 or #2 most-cited source in every LLM, according to an analysis of 30 million sources:

🤷

Find where Reddit is talking to your prospects without you.

→ Understand which search terms Reddit users are actively discussing (and how much monthly traffic each one gets)

→ See which Reddit threads are already ranking for your top keywords

→ Get context-aware, human-sounding comments written to naturally mention your brand or link.

Each report includes a ready-to-follow plan: where to comment, what to say, and how to track results. Just copy, paste, and post.

Book a free 30-minute call and I’ll walk you through the best Reddit strategy for your business.