Sources in the current edition.

Heather Wilde, Growth Hacking 101: Everything You Need to Get Started (ROCeteer, 2020), Epilogue.

The “exploitative growth” line is in the Writer’s Note of Growth Hacking 101 (2020). The warning quoted here is from a later essay: Alistair Croll, “Are You Evil Enough?” The Startup (Medium) (February 19, 2021). https://medium.com/swlh/are-you-evil-enough-6df79958be3c

Sean Ellis, “Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup” (July 26, 2010). https://www.startup-marketing.com/where-are-all-the-growth-hackers/

Sean Ellis / GrowthHackers, “What Is Growth Hacking?” https://growthhackers.com/growth-hacking/what-is-growth-hacking/

Marc Andreessen, “The only thing that matters” (2007). https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html

Steve Blank, “Get Out of My Building!” (2009). https://steveblank.com/2009/10/08/get-out-of-my-building/

Paul Graham, “Do Things that Don’t Scale” (2013). https://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Eric Ries, The Lean Startup, methodology. https://theleanstartup.com/principles

Apple Support, “If an app asks to track your activity.” https://support.apple.com/en-us/102420

Apple Developer, “User Privacy and Data Use.” https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/

Forrester, “Straight From the Source: Collecting Zero-Party Data From Customers.” https://www.forrester.com/blogs/straight-from-the-source-collecting-zero-party-data-from-customers/

Forrester, “Straight From the Source,” cited earlier in this chapter.

UK Information Commissioner’s Office, “Principle (c): Data minimisation.” https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/data-protection-principles/a-guide-to-the-data-protection-principles/data-minimisation/

Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, “The One Metric That Matters.” https://leananalyticsbook.com/one-metric-that-matters/

Brian Balfour, Casey Winters, Kevin Kwok, and Andrew Chen, “Growth Loops are the New Funnels,” Reforge (2018). https://www.reforge.com/blog/growth-loops

Andrew Chen, “Why the best way to drive viral growth [is] to increase retention and engagement.” https://andrewchen.com/more-retention-more-viral-growth/

Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, Lean Analytics (O’Reilly, 2013). Cohort analysis and stage-appropriate measurement. https://leananalyticsbook.com/

Peter H. van Westendorp, “NSS-Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM): A New Approach to Study Consumer Perception of Prices,” ESOMAR Congress (1976). The method measures stated perceptions of price, not observed purchases. ESOMAR research archive: https://ana.esomar.org/documents/nss-pricesensitivity-meter-psm-

April Dunford, Obviously Awesome (2019), positioning framework. https://www.aprildunford.com/books

Dunford, Obviously Awesome, cited earlier in this chapter.

Google Search Central, “AI features and your website,” checked October 2026. At that check, Google stated that its SEO best practices apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, that no special schema or AI text file is required, and that eligibility requires a page to be indexed and eligible for a snippet, without guaranteeing inclusion. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features

Google Search Central, “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content,” including its explanation of E-E-A-T and quality raters. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content

Google Search Central, structured-data introduction and FAQ guidance. Google restricted FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites in August 2023, and as of May 7, 2026 stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search altogether (reporting and testing support were removed later in 2026). FAQPage markup remains valid Schema.org but no longer earns that enhancement in Google. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data ; https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/faqpage

Pranjal Aggarwal et al., “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization,” KDD 2024; preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735 . On the authors’ benchmark, adding citations, quotations and statistics were among the best-performing rewrites, with relative visibility gains reported up to about 40%; keyword stuffing performed poorly. Experimental results, not a description of current commercial systems.

Google Search Central, “AI features and your website,” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features . Checked October 2026: Google describes query fan-out for AI Overviews and AI Mode, requires a page to be indexed and snippet-eligible to be shown as a supporting link, and applies the nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex controls to both features.

Google Search Central Blog, “Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console” (June 2026), https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/06/gen-ai-performance-reports . The reports count impressions in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s AI features (no clicks or queries). The reports and a separate Search Console opt-out began with a subset of U.K. sites and rolled out worldwide on August 31, 2026. The opt-out controls appearance in and grounding of generative AI Search responses; Google says it is not used as a ranking signal outside those features. Google, “New opportunities, control and insights for website owners,” updated August 31, 2026, https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/new-controls-website-owners/ . Rollout status checked October 2026.

Gemini Apps Help, “View related sources & double-check responses from Gemini Apps,” https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/14143489 . Checked October 2026.

Google Search Central, “Google’s common crawlers” (Google-Extended), https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers . Checked October 2026: Google-Extended covers training of Gemini models and grounding in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI; it is not a Search ranking signal and does not affect inclusion in Search.

OpenAI Help Center, “ChatGPT search,” https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-chatgpt-search . Checked October 2026; the providers named included Bing.

OpenAI Help Center, “Publishers and Developers – FAQ,” https://help.openai.com/en/articles/12627856-publishers-and-developers-faq ; OpenAI, “Overview of OpenAI Crawlers,” https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots . Checked October 2026.

Microsoft Bing, “Bing Webmaster Guidelines,” https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a . Checked October 2026; the guidelines were revised in early 2026 to address grounding and citations.

Bing Webmaster Blog, “Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (Public Preview)” (February 2026), https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/February-2026/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview . Covers citations in Microsoft Copilot, Bing’s AI-generated summaries and select partner integrations, with “grounding queries.”

Perplexity Help Center, “How does Perplexity work?” https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/10352895-how-does-perplexity-work . Checked October 2026.

Anthropic, “Claude can now search the web” (March 2025; extended to all plans in May 2025), https://www.anthropic.com/news/web-search .

Claude Help Center, “Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?” https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler . Names ClaudeBot (training), Claude-SearchBot (search) and Claude-User (user requests). Checked October 2026.

Louise Linehan, “An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied),” Ahrefs (2025), https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/ . Branded web mentions correlated with AI Overview brand visibility at 0.664, backlinks at 0.218. A tool vendor’s observational analysis, not a controlled test.

Federal Trade Commission, “The Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule: Questions and Answers.” The Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect October 21, 2024; § 465.4 bars offering compensation or other incentives conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment, positive or negative. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumer-reviews-testimonials-rule-questions-answers

For example, TikTok describes recommendations using interactions, content information, and user information, and Instagram describes separate ranking systems for Feed, Stories, Explore, and Reels. TikTok Support, “How TikTok recommends content,” https://support.tiktok.com/en/using-tiktok/exploring-videos/how-tiktok-recommends-content ; Instagram, “Instagram Ranking Explained” (2023), https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/instagram-ranking-explained . Product descriptions change and do not disclose a complete ranking formula.

Beginning March 31, 2025, YouTube Shorts views count starts and replays without a minimum watch time; the earlier measure became “engaged views,” and YouTube separately reports whether viewers stayed to watch or swiped away. YouTube, “A Change to How We Count Views on Shorts” (March 26, 2025), https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/333869549?hl=en ; YouTube Help, “Content tab analytics tips — Shorts,” https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/12942217?co=YOUTUBE._YTVideoType%3Dshorts&hl=en .

e.l.f. Beauty, “e.l.f. Turns Up the Volume on Beauty with Release of ‘Eyes. Lips. Face.’ Song” (October 11, 2019). Counts as reported by the company at that date. https://investor.elfbeauty.com/stock-and-financial/press-releases/landing-news/2019/10-11-2019-073719954

Instagram, “Instagram Ranking Explained” (2023): Reels are built for discovery and “the majority of what you see is from accounts you don’t follow”; “the most important predictions we make are how likely you are to reshare a reel, watch a reel all the way through, like it, and go to the audio page”; Instagram also surveys people on whether they find a reel entertaining. Unlike TikTok’s description, Instagram lists information about the poster, including follower count, among its inputs. https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/instagram-ranking-explained

Instagram, “Instagram Ranking Explained,” cited earlier in this chapter: watching a reel all the way through is among its most important predictions.

Instagram, “Instagram Ranking Explained,” cited earlier in this chapter: Instagram surveys people on whether they find a reel entertaining.

TikTok Newsroom, “How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou” (June 18, 2020): “neither follower count nor whether the account has had previous high-performing videos are direct factors in the recommendation system,” while “a video is likely to receive more views if posted by an account that has more followers”; and “a strong indicator of interest, such as whether a user finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end, would receive greater weight than a weak indicator.” https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-videos-for-you

TikTok Newsroom, “How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou,” cited earlier in this chapter: a strong indicator such as finishing a longer video receives greater weight.

YouTube Creators, “Video content creation strategy” (How Things Work), checked October 2026: “our algorithm doesn’t pay attention to videos, it pays attention to viewers.” YouTube Help, “Search & discovery tips — Shorts,” describes viewers being matched to the Shorts they are most likely to watch and enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/intl/en/creators/how-things-work/content-creation-strategy/ ; https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11914225?hl=en&co=YOUTUBE._YTVideoType%3Dshorts

Growth Hacking 101, content section (“So now you have a video – what good is that?”): transcribe a recorded talk, then cut snippets and “audiograms” for Facebook, Instagram and TikTok; Instagram pods are in the same book’s social section. The quoted line is from the author’s Growth Hacking 101 talk, which listed funny, controversial, helpful and amazing as what makes something go viral.

Heather Wilde, “How to Ensure You’re Getting the Most Out of Your Influencer Marketing Strategy,” Inc. (September 28, 2018). The same column closed: “if your business plan is just ‘Become a YouTube Star,’ I suggest you start working on your resume.” https://www.inc.com/heather-wilde/how-to-ensure-youre-getting-most-out-of-your-influencer-marketing-strategy.html

Cristos Goodrow, “On YouTube’s recommendation system,” YouTube Official Blog (September 15, 2021): signals include clicks, watch time, survey responses, sharing, likes and dislikes; “valued watchtime” is measured with surveys asking viewers to rate a video from one to five stars, and only four- and five-star ratings count. YouTube Help, “Search & discovery tips — Shorts”: signals include whether viewers choose to watch a recommended Short, ignore it, or select “not interested,” along with the share who chose to view and average percentage viewed. https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/on-youtubes-recommendation-system/ ; https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11914225?hl=en&co=YOUTUBE._YTVideoType%3Dshorts

Goodrow, “On YouTube’s recommendation system,” cited earlier: valued watch time counts only four- and five-star survey ratings.

Goodrow, “On YouTube’s recommendation system,” and YouTube Help, “Search & discovery tips — Shorts,” cited earlier: dislikes and “not interested” are among the signals.

TikTok lists videos you like or share among the user interactions it uses (“How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou”); YouTube lists sharing among its satisfaction signals (Goodrow, “On YouTube’s recommendation system”); Instagram lists the likelihood you’ll reshare a reel (“Instagram Ranking Explained”). Full citations are in the notes above.

The feature is called trial reels. Meta, “Test Content With Non-Followers Using Trial Reels” (December 10, 2024): trial reels are shown to non-followers first, and creators can then share them with followers manually or automatically. https://about.fb.com/news/2024/12/trial-reels-try-content-non-followers-first-see-what-perfoms-best/

The feature is called Test & Compare. YouTube Help, “A/B test titles & thumbnails” (checked October 2026): up to three thumbnails, titles, or title-and-thumbnail combinations per test; the result is reported as “Winner,” “Performed same,” or “Inconclusive,” judged on watch time share rather than clicks. Title testing was added in 2025. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/13861714

YouTube Help, “Measure key moments for audience retention”: “Intro” shows the share of viewers still watching after the first 30 seconds; spikes mark parts that were rewatched or shared; dips mark parts skipped or abandoned. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9314415 . For the Shorts “stayed to watch” versus “swiped away” measure, see YouTube Help, “Content tab analytics tips — Shorts,” https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/12942217 .

YouTube Help, “Measure key moments for audience retention,” cited in the previous note: spikes appear when more viewers are watching, rewatching, or sharing part of a video.

From the author’s own channel, as of October 2026. Her agents had been posting to it since the previous December, through a registered TikTok app that uses TikTok’s Content Posting API and a scheduler. Counts at that date: 21 followers and 152 likes in total; individual videos drew roughly 80 to 290 views, most around 100 to 150. No video broke out.

Federal Trade Commission, “FTC’s Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking.” https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking

Alexis C. Madrigal, “Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong,” The Atlantic (October 12, 2012). https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/dark-social-we-have-the-whole-history-of-the-web-wrong/263523/

Federal Trade Commission, “CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business,” checked October 2026. The guide requires honoring opt-out requests within ten business days and prohibits deceptive subject lines. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

UK Information Commissioner’s Office, “Guidance on direct marketing using electronic mail,” checked October 2026. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 added a separate charitable-purpose soft opt-in from February 5, 2026. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/direct-marketing-and-privacy-and-electronic-communications/guidance-on-direct-marketing-using-electronic-mail/

When checked in October 2026, Google’s guidance for bulk senders to personal Gmail accounts required SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) with alignment, valid DNS records and TLS (Transport Layer Security) connections, a reported-spam rate below 0.3% (with 0.1% recommended), and one-click unsubscribe for marketing messages, with unsubscribes processed within forty-eight hours. Google, “Email sender guidelines,” https://support.google.com/a/answer/81126?hl=en ; “Email sender guidelines FAQ,” https://support.google.com/a/answer/14229414?hl=en . Checked October 2026; provider requirements can change.

Insurance Marketing Coalition Ltd. v. FCC, No. 24-10277 (11th Cir., January 24, 2025), vacating Part III.D of the FCC’s 2023 order (the one-to-one consent restriction). https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202410277.pdf

For example, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection can download remote content in the background and hide the recipient’s IP address. Apple, “Mail Privacy Protection & Privacy.” https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/mail-privacy-protection/

Heather Wilde, Growth Hacking 101: Everything You Need to Get Started (ROCeteer, 2020), Chapter Six, “Send an ‘Oops!’ Email” and “More Email Hacks.”

Spotify’s Discover Weekly is a weekly selection of thirty tracks; in June 2025 Spotify added genre controls for Premium users. Spotify, “Discover Weekly Turns 10” (June 30, 2025). https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-06-30/discover-weekly-turns-10-celebrating-100-billion-tracks-streamed-and-a-decade-of-personalized-discovery/

Netflix Technology Blog, “Artwork Personalization at Netflix” (December 7, 2017). Historical product-engineering example. https://netflixtechblog.com/artwork-personalization-c589f074ad76

Klaviyo’s predictive analytics estimate churn risk from purchase number and frequency, with eligibility requirements including sufficient customer and order history. Klaviyo, “Understanding Klaviyo’s predictive analytics,” checked October 2026. https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020919731

Klaviyo’s Smart Send Time identifies an audience-level send time; Personalized Send Time works per recipient profile within a chosen window, with its own availability and plan requirements. Klaviyo, “Drive performance with right time delivery using Personalized Send Time,” checked October 2026. https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/45231714007323

The author’s written answers to a conference speaker Q&A on large language models and security operations (April 2026).

NIST, AI Risk Management Framework, voluntary risk-management guidance. https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework

The rule took effect October 21, 2024. Federal Trade Commission, “The Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule: Questions and Answers.” https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumer-reviews-testimonials-rule-questions-answers

When checked in October 2026, Article 50 was applicable. European Commission AI Act Service Desk, Article 50, consolidated text as displayed in October 2026. https://ai-act-service-desk.ec.europa.eu/en/ai-act/article-50

When checked in October 2026, a limited transition to December 2, 2026 applied to the provider marking-and-detection obligation in Article 50(2) for systems placed on the market before August 2, 2026; it was not a blanket delay for every disclosure duty. The transition was introduced by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (the “Digital Omnibus on AI”), published in the Official Journal on July 24, 2026. The Commission has also published implementation guidelines and a voluntary Code of Practice on marking and labelling AI-generated content (final version June 2026). European Commission, “Transparency obligations under Article 50 of the AI Act,” including the limited transition, https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/faqs/transparency-obligations-under-article-50-ai-act ; implementation guidelines, https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/guidelines-transparency-obligations-providers-and-deployers-ai-systems ; voluntary code, https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/code-practice-ai-generated-content .

C2PA, “C2PA Explainer” (specification 1.4), goals and limits of provenance; Content Credentials show whether provenance is intact and untampered, not whether the content is true. https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/1.4/explainer/Explainer.html

For example, YouTube’s “Captured with a camera” disclosure relies on qualifying capture tools and an intact provenance chain. YouTube Help, “Building trust on YouTube: ‘Captured with a camera’ disclosure.” https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/15446725?hl=en

Eric Ries, The Lean Startup, methodology. https://theleanstartup.com/principles

Microsoft Research, “Patterns of Trustworthy Experimentation: Pre-Experiment Stage” (July 31, 2020). https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/experimentation-platform-exp/articles/patterns-of-trustworthy-experimentation-pre-experiment-stage/

Microsoft Research, “Diagnosing Sample Ratio Mismatch in A/B Testing” (2020), with the associated KDD 2019 research. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/articles/diagnosing-sample-ratio-mismatch-in-a-b-testing/

Ramesh Johari, Leo Pekelis, and David J. Walsh, “Always Valid Inference: Bringing Sequential Analysis to A/B Testing” (2015; revised 2019). https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.04922

John R. Boyd, The Essence of Winning and Losing (unpublished briefing, 1996), the source of the Observe–Orient–Decide–Act sketch; see Chet Richards’ illustrated edition, https://ooda.de/media/chet_richards_-_the_essence_of_winning_and_losing_deconstructed.pdf

Heather Wilde, Growth Hacking 101: Everything You Need to Get Started (ROCeteer, 2020), Chapter One.

Wilde, Growth Hacking 101, Chapter One.

Author’s account of her own test, as she described it in a Growth Hacking 101 talk. No independent public record of the test exists; figures are her reported numbers, and the $4,800 ceiling is simple arithmetic (1,600 × $3), not reported spend.

Author’s account from her event records; aggregate figures only. The forum and its sponsor are not named.

YouTube Official Blog, “MrBeast, now in Spanish! Say hello to multi-language audio on YouTube” (February 23, 2023). The post reported that he had dubbed his most popular videos into eleven languages and had been part of the feature’s testing; the language count is as of that post. https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/multi-language-audio-mrbeast-interview/

YouTube Official Blog, “How Ryan Trahan’s YouTube Following Raised $11 Million for St. Jude” (August 20, 2025): more than $11 million raised for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital during the fifty-states series with Haley Pham, against an initial goal of $1 million; the reported final total was $11.5 million. Ryan Trahan’s official site records more than $1.4 million raised through the penny series (2022); coverage of the series, such as vidIQ’s, identifies the charity as Feeding America. Reported campaign totals, not causal estimates. https://blog.youtube/creator-and-artist-stories/ryan-trahan-50-states-50-days/ ; https://www.trahan.co/ ; https://vidiq.com/blog/post/ryan-trahan-penny-billion-youtube-views/

Tim Draper interview, San Francisco Chronicle/SFGATE, March 13, 2005. Firsthand retrospective account; not an independently audited growth series. https://www.sfgate.com/business/ontherecord/article/DRAPER-FISHER-JURVETSON-On-the-Record-Tim-2723690.php

Drew Houston, Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned (2010), company presentation. https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587/3836587 ; accessible deck copy: https://waitlist-image-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/blog-assets/Dropbox_Slideshow.pdf

The ALS Association, “The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,” the association’s own account of the 2014 challenge (17 million participants; $115 million to the association). https://www.als.org/ibc

TikTok for Business, “Love & Pebble,” vendor case study, checked October 2026. The CPA wording is discussed as an error, not adopted as a result. https://ads.tiktok.com/business/en-US/inspiration/smb-love-and-pebble-tiktok-shop-ads

Cloudflare, “How the April 28, 2025, power outage in Portugal and Spain impacted Internet traffic and connectivity.” https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-power-outage-in-portugal-spain-impacted-internet/

Cloudflare Radar documentation. https://developers.cloudflare.com/radar/

Rand Fishkin, “In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click,” SparkToro. Using Similarweb’s U.S. desktop and mobile panel for January–April 2026, the analysis estimated that 68.01% of Google searches ended without a click. The methodology notes differences from earlier panels. https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2026-less-than-one-third-of-google-searches-still-send-a-click/

Browsing data from 900 U.S. adults in March 2025: traditional-result clicks on 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without one; search-result pages were reconstructed in April 2025. Athena Chapekis and Anna Lieb, “Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results,” Pew Research Center (July 22, 2025). https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/

Rand Fishkin and Patrick O’Donnell, “NEW Research: AIs are highly inconsistent when recommending brands or products; marketers should take care when tracking AI visibility,” SparkToro (early 2026), https://sparktoro.com/blog/new-research-ais-are-highly-inconsistent-when-recommending-brands-or-products-marketers-should-take-care-when-tracking-ai-visibility/ . Volunteers ran 2,961 recommendation prompts across ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s AI search features; fewer than 1 in 100 runs returned the same list of brands, and fewer than 1 in 1,000 the same list in the same order.

Google Analytics Help, “What’s new in Google Analytics” (AI Assistant channel added to the default channel group, May 2026), https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9164320 , and “[GA4] Default channel group,” https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9756891 ; OpenAI Help Center, “Publishers and Developers – FAQ” (utm_source=chatgpt.com), https://help.openai.com/en/articles/12627856-publishers-and-developers-faq . The list of recognized assistants changes; check it. Checked October 2026.

Google Search Central, “AI features and your website,” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features : traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in Search Console’s Performance report under the “Web” search type. Checked October 2026.

Google Search Central Blog, “Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console” (June 2026), https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/06/gen-ai-performance-reports . Impressions only; initially available to a subset of sites, then rolled out worldwide on August 31, 2026. Checked October 2026.

Bing Webmaster Blog, “Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (Public Preview)” (February 2026), https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/February-2026/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview .

Lei Huang et al., “A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Models: Principles, Taxonomy, Challenges, and Open Questions,” arXiv:2311.05232 (2023; revised 2024). https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.05232

IAB, Connected TV Creative Best Practices (August 2021), https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/CTV_CreativeBestPractices_August_2021.pdf ; IAB Tech Lab, “CTV Ad Portfolio,” https://iabtechlab.com/standards/ctv-ad-portfolio/ . Consult current platform specifications before buying placement.

OWASP GenAI Security Project, “LLM06:2025 Excessive Agency,” https://genai.owasp.org/llmrisk/llm062025-excessive-agency/ ; “OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications” (2026 edition, released December 2025), https://genai.owasp.org/2025/12/09/owasp-top-10-for-agentic-applications-the-benchmark-for-agentic-security-in-the-age-of-autonomous-ai/ .

Heather Wilde, Growth Hacking 101: Everything You Need to Get Started (ROCeteer, 2020): ad-targeting “Location” guidance in the Facebook advertising chapter; “Scraping” (Phantombuster, Import.io); “Using Social Pods to Increase Engagement.” Quoted and summarized here so the retraction is on the record.

Growth Hacking 101, “Scraping” section.

Federal Trade Commission, final consumer-review rule announcement and scope (August 14, 2024). https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials

Federal Trade Commission, “Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers.” https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/disclosures-101-social-media-influencers

Google Search Central, “Spam policies for Google web search,” including scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse, checked October 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies

Roger Lee, “Will your startup need to do a layoff?” (April 21, 2020). https://layoffs.fyi/will-your-startup-need-to-do-a-layoff/

OpenAI, “Overview of OpenAI Crawlers,” https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots ; Perplexity, “Perplexity Crawlers,” https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers . Checked October 2026. Claude Help Center, “Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?” https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518-does-anthropic-crawl-data-from-the-web-and-how-can-site-owners-block-the-crawler , checked October 2026. Google’s AI-feature eligibility guidance is at https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features .

Google Search Central, “Google’s common crawlers,” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers ; Microsoft Bing, “Bing Webmaster Guidelines,” https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a . Checked October 2026.

Jeremy Howard, “The /llms.txt file, v2,” originally published September 3, 2024; modified August 10, 2026. https://llmstxt.org/

Google says no special AI text file is needed for its AI search features. John Mueller (Google) also said publicly that, as far as he knew, none of the AI services had said they use the file, and that server logs showed they didn’t request it; reported in “Google Says LLMs.Txt Comparable To Keywords Meta Tag,” Search Engine Journal (2025), https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-says-llms-txt-comparable-to-keywords-meta-tag/544804/ . A public comment, not formal documentation; check your own server logs.