In his account, Yesilyurt describes a $50 experiment that he says drew ChatGPT retrievals and citations for fabricated figures. His traffic and citation measurements have not been independently verified.
By [Ryan Merket](https://runtimewire.com/author/ryan-merket)
· Published
Primary source: [Peec AI](https://peec.ai/blog/publish-stats-get-cited-the-tactic-that-put-my-data-all-over-the-web)
Why it matters #
AI systems can retrieve material that ranks poorly in conventional search, and Yesilyurt says figures from his deliberately fabricated dataset later appeared in research. For teams using AI-generated research, a citation is a lead to verify, not proof that the underlying number is true.
Metehan Yesilyurt, a GEO researcher at Peec AI, published an account of how StateGlobe, a website he built with fabricated statistics, continued attracting ChatGPT retrievals and citations after its Google visibility collapsed. The experiment raises a practical problem for researchers and writers: a figure can travel through AI search and into published work without becoming reliable evidence.…
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