05Case studyMakerFlo
MakerFlo. Even when you’re winning, there’s 99 sources you’re not in.
A small crafts SMB. Single SKU at audit time (TruFlat Laser Wood). Cleanest data we’ve seen. And still, 99 untapped citation channels the brand had no idea existed. Authority is built one source at a time.
- Industry
- Crafts
- Headline outcome
- 99 untapped sources
Measured a clean catalog and a quiet authority graph.
The team ran 820 LLM executions across four providers. Only 25 of 245 ground-truth comparisons came back as a mismatch (the lowest rate on the platform). Average presence_score: 69.93 (also the highest). The catalog wasn’t the problem. The citation graph was.
- 10%mismatch rate (lowest on the platform)
- 69.93avg presence_score (highest on the platform)
- 99untapped citation channels surfaced
Simulated the citation pyramid: Wirecutter at the top, niche maker forums at the base.
The team mapped the 99 candidate sources by domain authority, topical relevance, and observed AI-citation frequency. Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, iFixit, and Forbes anchored the top tier; Craft-Loft, CraftedElements, and Reddit r/lasercutting filled the long tail.
- Each candidate source ranked by AI-citation observability
- Outreach pitches drafted for the top-15 in the merchant’s voice
- Long-tail community sources ranked separately for organic seeding
Shipped 99 SOURCE_OUTREACH tickets, each with a draft pitch.
The team opened 99 SOURCE_OUTREACH items. Each ticket includes the source URL, the editorial fit angle, and a first-draft pitch the merchant team can edit and send. One SKU; 99 outbound conversations queued.
Compounded: citation discovery is now run on every clean catalog by default.
MakerFlo proved that low-mismatch catalogs aren’t fully optimised. They’ve just exhausted the on-page work. Citation discovery now runs as a default pass on every audit, not just on catalogs with content gaps.