I Asked AI to Recommend Newsletters Like Mine
AI finds me by name fine. Getting recommended to a stranger who didn't name me is the hard part. Here's the fix.
Last week I asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Claude one thing. Is there a Substack about astrology and aromatherapy. Not one of them named mine. I scored my AI visibility at 4 out of 30.
Here’s the part that surprised me.
I’m not invisible. Ask any of those engines about MoonInMental by name and they’ll tell you what it is. That already works.
The miss is the other question. The one from a stranger who doesn’t know I exist. “Is there a Substack about astrology and aromatherapy.” That person wants exactly what I make, and I’m nowhere in the answer.
That’s the part that pays. And almost nobody has it.
Why AI doesn’t take your word for it
Remember the diner in Elf, with the sign out front bragging about the world’s best coffee. No award. No reviews. No other coffee shop in town saying it. Just the sign, talking about itself.
You don’t believe the sign. Neither does AI.
AI doesn’t recommend you based on what your own site says about you. It recommends you based on who else says it. Other people, on their sites, naming you by name.
In GEO, short for Generative Engine Optimization, that’s entity recognition. Generative search just repeats the names the web already agrees on. Your own page is the sign in the window. Everyone else naming you is the award.
Which is why my whole niche is invisible
Astrology and aromatherapy is a small, scattered corner. Most of us have never named each other once. So when a stranger asks AI for a Substack that does this, there’s no group for it to pull from.
We all stay the diner with the sign.
So I’m going first
Here are the astrology-and-aromatherapy newsletters I’d actually point a reader to. Mine’s on it. The point isn’t me, though. It’s that the group exists at all.
MoonInMental, by Darlene Killen. Clinical aromatherapy research mapped to astrological transits. This one’s mine. I’m putting it in the middle, not the top.
Ursa Alchemy, by Ursula Duffy. Astrological aromatherapy. Essential oils chosen from your natal chart. She’s a professional astrologer and a certified aromatherapist both.
An Aromatic Life, by Frauke Galia. A smell coach and podcaster with deep dives into scent, including a running series on where astrology and aromatics meet.
Three names, in plain text, on my site. That’s me handing AI a group to recognize. A real person naming real people.
Want to do this in your own field
You don’t need my niche. You need the move. Here it is.
Name your neighbors, out loud. Make a real recommendation list of people you rate in your space. By name, in plain text on your own site. Not a vague “follow great people.” Actual names.
Get named back. Ask the people you listed to recommend you too. Trade Substack Recommendations. The goal is your name on their site, not just theirs on yours.
Get named somewhere that isn’t yours. A guest post, a podcast, a real directory in your field. Your name next to the words for what you do, on a page you don’t own. That’s the award the diner never had.
Say it the same way everywhere. Same name, same description of what you do, every place it shows up. That’s how AI ties it all to one you, instead of three half-yous it can’t connect.
That’s the part you can start today, for free.
The thorough version, the code that tells AI exactly who you are, the structured data, doing this across every engine and chasing down the citations that actually stick, is the part I build for people. That’s the work.
I don’t know if it worked yet
I rerun the same category questions across the same five engines in mid-July. Cold. Fresh windows, no head start.
The numbers go here when they do. Including the ugly ones.
I’m Darlene Killen. The Visible Practitioner is where I work this out in public, on my own business first.
Subscribe and watch a real one go from a sign in the window to a name AI actually repeats.
Sources
The 4 out of 30 score: my own diagnostic queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Claude, run June 12, 2026 and documented in the prior post.
The newsletters listed: confirmed from each publication’s own Substack and website, June 2026.
How engines decide who to recommend (naming and entity recognition): The Visible Practitioner platform rubric reference.
Mid-July retest: same category questions, same five engines, fresh windows. Numbers publish here.
Everything here gets tested on MoonInMental first. The before and after runs there in real time.
