Has ChatGPT actually changed how you discover software?
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I’ve noticed a pretty big change in my own behavior over the last year.
If I’m looking for a tool for something specific, I’ll usually ask ChatGPT first, then check Product Hunt or Reddit to see what real people are saying. Google has become more of a second step for me.
What I’m curious about is whether thats actually changing discovery for other makers too, or if I’m just unusually deep into AI tools.
For those building SaaS products: are you seeing people discover you through AI yet? Or is Google still doing most of the work?
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I think AI has changed the discovery phase more than the buying phase. I’ll ask ChatGPT for a shortlist, but I still look for real user experiences before commiting to a tool.
@yosun_negi I think the real shift is less Google to ChatGPT and more search to shortlist.
AI is already really good at getting a product onto that shortlist fast. But getting from “this looks interesting” to actually using or paying for it still comes from trust, real users, proof etc.
What I’m curious about is what happens when AI gets really good at absorbing those signals too. Then maybe discovery + validation just becomes one thing, which is kinda crazy when you think about it.
Google still does most of the work across my products, but the shape of that traffic has changed even where the channel has not. Some sessions now arrive with no keyword attached at all, just a referral spike with a flat unfamiliar path, which is what a click out of a ChatGPT or Claude answer looks like in analytics. Hard to separate cleanly from normal search. The thing worth checking before you optimise for any of this: does the AI answer name your product, or does it just describe the category and list three options. Being the one it names by name is worth chasing. Being folded into "there are tools like X" is not, that traffic barely converts.
@oshylabs That’s a really good distinction. A mention isn’t necessarily a recommendation, and I think people tend to lump those together. Being named as the answer to a specific need is obviously much more valuable than just appearing somewhere in a list. Have you found a good way to track that consistently across different AI models?
For me the biggest shift is when I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for yet.
If I already know the library or service, I’ll go straight to the docs. But if I’m trying to decide how to solve something or compare a few options, ChatGPT is usually the first stop now.
It’s good at getting me from “I need to solve this” to a shortlist pretty quickly. After that I still check GitHub, docs, open issues, pricing, and whether the thing is actually maintained.
So I still use Google a lot, just later in the process than I used to.
@adam_oberlander That’s pretty much how I use it too. The shortlist part is the interesting bit for me, because that’s where AI can suddenly put a product in front of you that you’d never even heard of.
Have you actually ended up using or buying something you first discovered through ChatGPT?
I’ve definitely changed my workflow too. ChatGPT is becoming the first filter for finding tools, but I still rely on Produvt Hunt and communities for validation. The interesting question is how makers can optimize for AI discovery, not just search rankings.
@sophietech Exactly. I think discovery and validation are starting to split into two different layers. AI helps you build the shortlist, while communities like Product Hunt help you decide what’s actually worth trusting. For makers, the interesting part is figuring out what makes a product “recommendable” by AI in the first place.
Do you think AI will eventually become the main way people discover new products, or will communities like Product Hunt always play a different role?
@erez_aharonovitch1 I think AI will become the first stop for discovery, especially when people already know what problem they’re trying to solve. Communities like Product Hunt will still matter, but more for validation, serendipity, and seeing what other builders are excited about.
So probably less “AI replaces Product Hunt” and more that they end up owning different parts of the discovery journey.
One thing I’m noticing from the replies here: AI seems to be winning the shortlist, but not necessarily
the final decision yet.
Curious if anyone here is actually tracking this on the maker side, not just AI referral traffic, but whether ChatGPT/Claude are naming your product when people ask for recommendations?
Answering from the receiving end, because that half is easier to measure than my own behaviour and harder to fool myself about.
On my site, ChatGPT is now the single largest referrer. Ahead of Google. That flipped inside the last year and I did nothing deliberate to cause it, which is the part I keep chewing on.
What changed with it is which page wins. Assistants do not weigh domain age or backlinks the way search does. They lift a specific claim off a specific page and hand it over with attribution. So the page that gets cited is not the one with the strongest link profile or the most complete coverage of a topic. It is the one that answers exactly one question and has a real figure in it, because a figure is the part that can be quoted. General, well-optimised category pages are close to useless there, which inverts a fair amount of standard advice.
That also makes it much friendlier to new sites than search is. A four month old domain can be quoted today. It cannot rank today.
The honest gap, and I have not seen anyone solve it: I can see that the traffic arrives, and I cannot see what was asked. Search Console gives me queries. Assistant referrals arrive with no query attached at all. So I know the channel works and I cannot steer it. All I can do is notice which pages get pulled and infer backwards, which is guessing with extra steps.
On your split between discovery and buying, I would put it slightly differently. The shortlist moved. The verification did not, and that is why you still go to Product Hunt and Reddit afterwards. What that means for makers is that the assistant decides whether you are considered at all, and humans still decide whether you are chosen. Losing the first stage is quieter than losing the second, because nobody bounces off your site. They simply never hear your name.