Health tech

54% of AI citations

Vielight builds brain photobiomodulation devices — a considered, research-heavy purchase. The AI answers its buyers ask for are assembled from Reddit, so we seeded the threads the answers cite. Across 347 citations tracked, 54% point at content we put there.

Industry: Neurotech devices
Date: 2025–2026
Website: vielight.com

Client Stats

188

AI answer citations of our content

54%

of all Reddit citations in those answers are ours

12 of 47

Reddit threads the engines cite are ours

40 hours

from publishing to the first AI citation

The situation

Nobody impulse-buys a $2,000 brain helmet — they research it for weeks. Ask Google or ChatGPT which photobiomodulation device is actually worth it and a finished answer comes back with a short list of citations, and Reddit threads dominate that list. Whoever wrote the threads wrote the answer.

Vielight makes brain photobiomodulation devices, and its buyers’ questions are exactly the ones the engines answer this way: which wavelengths reach brain tissue, irradiance versus total power, how rival helmets are actually built, whether the research holds up. So over the past year we seeded those threads ourselves — 60 posts and 32 comments across r/redlighttherapy, r/Biohackers, r/VielightCommunity and adjacent subreddits, one buying question per thread.

Then we tracked what the engines actually cite. While answering photobiomodulation queries, Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity produced 347 Reddit citations. 188 of them — 54% — point at content we put there, and 12 of the 47 Reddit threads cited are ours.

What we did

Seed the threads the answer engines cite

The challenge

Our approach

You can’t buy a citation. The answer engines assemble their responses from Reddit threads that already answer the question well.

We wrote the definitive answers ourselves — wavelength penetration, irradiance versus total power, device teardowns — before the engines went looking.

A $2,000 wellness device gets researched hard, by skeptics, in communities that distrust marketing.

60 posts and 32 comments seeded over a year across r/redlighttherapy, r/Biohackers, r/VielightCommunity and adjacent subreddits — one buying question per thread.

Four engines, four different retrieval habits to win at once.

Our content is cited in 59 of 103 Perplexity answers, 51 of 106 AI Mode, 50 of 78 AI Overviews and 28 of 58 ChatGPT answers tracked.

New content usually takes months to earn a search engine’s trust.

A community post published mid-August earned its first AI citation about 40 hours later, and has been cited 14 times since.

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Ask an AI which brain light helmet is worth it.

The most-cited thread in the category is ours: a teardown asking whether a competitor’s helmet is a rebranded white-label device, cited 51 times with a best position of 1. Our explainer on irradiance versus total power adds 37 citations, and a thread on which wavelengths actually reach brain tissue owns the Perplexity answers with 18 more.

And the loop keeps tightening: a community post published mid-August earned its first AI citation about 40 hours later and has been cited 14 times since. Every new thread compounds the same way — the engines have learned that the definitive answers to brain photobiomodulation questions live where we put them.

Ready?

What this looks like for you

All the upsides of having a working Reddit marketing strategy

If your category's subreddit moderates you out...

that is not the end of the strategy. It is the start of it.

The room where your buyers already are...

is usually one door over from the room with your industry's name on it.

Every thread we publish in a sub...

you own stays indexed. You stop paying us, it keeps ranking.

Get started today

Testimonial

Iuliia ShnaiAug 19, 2026

Papermark

Reddit is doing so much for us in search. Papermark is now the top recommendation on Reddit in our category, and that matters.

Imran

@isb

Paul picks a CPM number and then creates a reddit campaign to hit that. Like Chappelle writes jokes.

Aug 20, 2026

134 referrals

to MessageDesk from Reddit in 90 days. The same volume ChatGPT sent them.

166K views

from a single organic post for a rug brand. 67 upvotes, 52 comments.

HanafiJul 27, 2026

Inflow

Great results so far. The subreddit AEO work especially attracts the leads we love: qualified, not problematic, and with money.

KyleMay 19, 2026

MessageDesk

Love it, this is great. More I say. Real, traceable Reddit users became leads and booked meetings.

“Most agencies do a bit of everything for everyone. Paul picked the hardest channel on the internet and built real credibility on it. That's why I advise Spacestation.”

Gregory Kennedy

VibeYourSaaS

JamesAug 18, 2026

Ethos

Love it. Our AI citations have been rising steadily since June and the growth curve looks good. Even in negative threads about us there's now organic fightback.

JeremyMay 29, 2026

EcomCPA

Amazing, great job. We now hold multiple first-page Google spots for the exact terms our buyers search, from international tax to Shopify accountant.

The top Reddit recommendation in its category, and climbing search because of it.

ShivamMay 18, 2026

Founder, Floqer

Reddit is looking good. I'm impressed by the work these guys have been doing. My only question was how we could press even harder.

J.P. MohlerAug 5, 2026

CPO & Co-founder, General Legal

We told Paul we only care about one thing: General Legal coming up when someone searches AI law firm. Now the top cited source in those AI answers is a Reddit thread his team made.

John Wright

@johnwrightai

Thanks Paul, launched it at an affiliate conference today day 1 and the response is overwhelming.

May 19, 2026

Miguel Castillo-ClarkMay 27, 2026

1v1Me

The AMA they ran with our pro player crushed my expectations. Ads, our subreddit, AI citations, they handle all of it.

Grant WalkerMar 5, 2026

Argo IQ

Super impressed with what they've built. A very cool project.

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Free playbook

Steal the playbook behind this study.

The exact Reddit AMA process this case study ran: how to pick the subreddit, pitch angles the community upvotes, and turn one thread into page-one Google real estate.