Short answer: Google's AI Mode answered all 20 questions. 13 of the answers cited Reddit. None named Launchpat, the product we make. Three other AI engines, asked the same questions the day before, named us in none of their answers either. It is one run of 20 questions, scored by us, and the limits are below.
1. The question
When a founder asks an AI search engine for a tool to find their first users, which products get named, and where does the answer come from? We build one of those tools, so we asked the questions our buyers ask and counted what came back.
2. How we ran it
- Questions: 20 questions a founder or indie developer would ask about finding users and launching, written by us before the run. All 20 are listed below.
- Engine: Google AI Mode, through DataForSEO's AI Mode endpoint, set to the US, English and desktop. One run, on . It cost $0.08.
- What we counted: the sites each answer cited, and whether it named Launchpat. "Named" means our name appears in the answer text or a citation links to launchpat.app.
3. What came back
- Answered: 20 of 20. One answer cited no sources at all (1 of 20).
- Cited a reddit.com page: 13 of 20.
- Named Launchpat: 0 of 20.
The wording of the question matters. 10 of the 20 questions mention Reddit or subreddits by name, and 9 of those 10 answers cited Reddit. The other 10 questions cited it 4 times.
After Reddit, the most cited sites were medium.com (3 answers) and other tools' own pages: syften.com, octolens.com, redreach.ai and okara.ai were each cited in 2 answers. So when an answer did not cite Reddit, it often cited another tool's own page.
All 20 questions and what each answer cited
| Question | Cites Reddit | Names Launchpat |
|---|---|---|
| What are the best tools to find Reddit threads where people are asking for a product like mine? | Yes | No |
| How can an indie game developer find players on Reddit without getting banned for self-promotion? | Yes | No |
| Is there a tool that finds online conversations where people ask for a SaaS like mine and drafts a reply? | Yes | No |
| What are good alternatives to GummySearch for Reddit audience research? | Yes | No |
| What is the best social listening tool for indie hackers and solo founders on a budget? | Yes | No |
| How do I get my first users for a SaaS without paid ads? | No | No |
| Which AI tools help founders write Reddit replies that don't sound like ads? | Yes | No |
| What are the best marketing tools for launching an indie game on Steam? | Yes | No |
| What tools monitor Reddit, Hacker News and Bluesky for people asking about my product category? | Yes | No |
| How do I promote a Steam game on Reddit and Bluesky as a solo developer? | Yes | No |
| What is the best AI marketing assistant for solo SaaS founders? | No | No |
| What are alternatives to F5Bot for Reddit keyword alerts? | Yes | No |
| What are alternatives to Syften for community monitoring? | No | No |
| How do I find the subreddits where my target customers hang out? | No | No |
| What tools help plan a product launch step by step for a small team? | No | No |
| What are the best tools for build-in-public founders to find customers? | No | No |
| Which tools find leads on Reddit for B2B SaaS? | Yes | No |
| Is there a tool that finds people asking for recommendations on Reddit and X that match my app? | Yes | No |
| What is the best tool for indie app developers to find communities to market their app? | Yes | No |
| Is there an AI launch planner for indie developers that tells me what to do next? | No | No |
4. Three other engines, the day before
On we sent the same 20 questions to 3 more engines through their APIs, with web search on: Perplexity (sonar), OpenAI (gpt-6-luna) and Claude (claude-sonnet-5-5). 58 of the 60 answers were usable; 2 OpenAI calls were rate limited. Launchpat was named in 0 of them. Reddit was cited in only 6 of the 58, far less often than in Google's AI Mode.
5. Then we looked at plain Google results
AI Mode is built on Google Search, so we also checked the top 10 plain Google results for 7 buyer questions on : 3 for Launchpat and 4 for a security tool for small SaaS teams that we use as a test product.
| Product | Question | Reddit threads in the top 10 |
|---|---|---|
| Launchpat | What tools monitor Reddit, Hacker News and Bluesky for people asking about my product category? | 6 of 10 |
| Launchpat | What are alternatives to F5Bot for Reddit keyword alerts? | 10 of 10 |
| Launchpat | Which tools find leads on Reddit for B2B SaaS? | 5 of 10 |
| Security tool (test product) | What tools automate security reviews for a small SaaS? | 0 of 9 |
| Security tool (test product) | What is the best security automation platform for a startup on a budget? | 0 of 10 |
| Security tool (test product) | How do small SaaS teams get SOC 2 ready without a security engineer? | 2 of 10 |
| Security tool (test product) | Is there a tool that monitors my SaaS for security issues automatically? | 3 of 10 |
For the security tool, the two questions that ask for a tool or platform returned no Reddit threads; Google showed review sites and lists of tools instead. The two that describe a problem returned 2 and 3 threads. All three Launchpat questions returned Reddit threads, which is not surprising: all three mention Reddit.
We also estimated the age of the 15 threads we judged relevant across both products. 14 were probably posted before May 2026. That estimate is rough: it comes from Reddit's thread ids, not from opening each thread. Reddit archives most posts after six months, so many of the threads Google ranks can no longer take a reply. AI Mode itself stored only the cited sites, so we don't know the age of the threads it cited.
6. What we think it means
This part is our reading, not a measurement. The answers were built from two kinds of page: threads where people describe a problem in their own words, and pages that answer the question directly, often written by a tool about its own category. A product that is in neither doesn't get named, however good it is. For a small product, that means being useful in those threads and publishing pages that answer the question plainly, with the numbers on the page.
7. Limits
- One run. AI Mode answers change from one run to the next and from one person to the next. A rerun could come out differently.
- 20 questions, written by us, about one category: tools for finding users and launching a product.
- One engine for the main result, in US English, through a data provider's endpoint rather than the Google app.
- Wording drives part of the result. 10 of the 20 questions mention Reddit or subreddits by name. Those cited Reddit in 9 of 10 answers; the other 10 cited it in 4.
- Scored by us. "Cites Reddit" means a reddit.com link among the answer's citations, and "names Launchpat" is a text match. We kept the cited sites but not the answer text, so we can't quote the answers.
- The follow-up was small: 7 questions, two products, and relevance judged by one person from titles and snippets.
- We make Launchpat, so we have a stake in this result.
8. What we're changing
- We publish answer-first pages like this one, with the method and the numbers on the page.
- Next: Launchpat will check whether a thread can still take a reply before it suggests one, because so many of the threads Google ranks are archived.