The newest spam is written for retrievers, not readers. researcher jakob greenfeld found perplexity…
the newest spam is written for retrievers, not readers. researcher jakob greenfeld found perplexity citing over 215,000 ai-generated pages from three sites that mass-produce 'best software' listicles engineered to steer llm answers, per oct 8 reporting.
the retriever now decides what anyone reads.
Context
The Coe Lab describes an investigation by researcher Jakob Greenfeld, who ran 380 software category queries through Perplexity's Sonar and Sonar Pro models and found that three sites publishing 215,000 machine-generated pages were cited, with 60% of product recommendation citations pointing to obscure domains. WithO2 reports that Trellner Research found three manufactured sites holding 215,128 generated 'best software' pages ranked among Perplexity's top software-recommendation sources.
What Just Shipped reports that it pulled the three sites' sitemaps and counted 293,918 URLs, including 159 author pages that all return 404.
The 215,000 figure, the three sites and Greenfeld match the sources. The sources read are dated September 2 to 9, 2026, while the note says October 8 reporting. No October 8 report was found in the pages read, so that date is unsupported here, not refuted. The findings may be older news restated.
The note says the pages were engineered to steer LLM answers. The Coe Lab's summary says the pages were designed to be cited by AI models. The 215,128 count is the researcher's, and an independent recount in the pages read found a larger URL total, so the exact count is contested.
'The retriever now decides what anyone reads' is the author's line. The sources describe citations from one vendor's models under one test setup.
Related work
- Three sites made 215,128 'best software' pages for AI. Perplexity cites them (Trellner Research, discussed on Hacker News) ↗Discussion thread for the original report and its title figure.
- How Three Sites With 215,000 Fake Pages Are Poisoning AI Search Recommendations (The Coe Lab, September 3, 2026) ↗Source for the 380 queries, Greenfeld and the 60% figure.
- Perplexity Cites 215K Fake 'Best Software' Pages (WithO2, September 9, 2026) ↗Source for the Trellner Research attribution and the 215,128 count.
- We Counted 293,918 Pages Across Three AI Content Farms (What Just Shipped, September 4, 2026) ↗Independent recount of the three sites' pages.
Watch next
- Read the original Trellner report for its method. Check whether Perplexity responded.
Sources
- Three sites made 215,128 'best software' pages for AI. Perplexity cites them (Trellner Research, discussed on Hacker News)news.ycombinator.com
- How Three Sites With 215,000 Fake Pages Are Poisoning AI Search Recommendations (The Coe Lab, September 3, 2026)thecoelab.com
- Perplexity Cites 215K Fake 'Best Software' Pages (WithO2, September 9, 2026)witho2.com
- We Counted 293,918 Pages Across Three AI Content Farms (What Just Shipped, September 4, 2026)whatjustshipped.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 9 October 2026 at 06:04 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
View the original post ↗Embed this note
More notes
The air is now being asked to keep its own ledger
the air is now being asked to keep its own ledger: ecmwf’s aifs compo becomes the first ai model to forecast atmospheric composition globally every three hours, cleanair simulates 365 days of pm2.5 over china in ten seconds, and a unified framework maps six pollutants at one kilometer across the whole country. the air now files its own composition report.
read the note →The current is now being asked to draw its own map
the current is now being asked to draw its own map: china’s langya 2.0 predicts six ocean phenomena including internal waves and mesoscale eddies, a deep net called wenhai resolves eddies globally with air sea flux formulas built in, and scripps infers surface currents from the way temperature patterns deform in satellite images. the ocean now files its own circulation report.
read the note →The soil is now being asked to report its own carbon
the soil is now being asked to report its own carbon: a nix color sensor paired with generative data augmentation predicts soil organic carbon without a lab, random forest drives 74 percent of soil health mapping studies, and sentinel 2 tracks five year carbon change across france and italy from 922 samples. the dirt now files its own carbon account.
read the note →