Case study
This case study shows how a sustained earned media campaign transformed TopDawg from being absent in AI recommendations to becoming the top-recommended U.S. dropshipping platform across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Industry
Engagement
Service Provided
TopDawg is one of the largest U.S.-focused dropshipping platforms, connecting online retailers with 3,000+ verified American suppliers and 500,000+ wholesale products. Founded in 2004, the company launched its SaaS platform in 2017 and now serves 20,000+ registered retailers across Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and WooCommerce.
By early 2025, TopDawg had invested heavily in SEO and occupied top positions on Google for a wide range of competitive dropshipping keywords with a U.S. focus. In short: a dominant platform with serious market traction — but one that needed its authority recognized beyond Google.
The challenges:
Despite ranking #1 on Google for their target keywords, TopDawg was largely absent from AI-generated recommendations. When users asked ChatGPT for the best U.S. dropshipping platform, competitors with weaker products but stronger editorial footprints were recommended instead. The diagnosis: exceptional on-site SEO but minimal third-party editorial coverage — the exact authority gap that keeps brands invisible to AI.
PolyGrowth launched a comprehensive earned media and authority-building program starting in March 2025, targeting the editorial tax threshold for the U.S. dropshipping category.
The campaign combined three tiers of coverage: high-profile editorial placements in national outlets to establish broad authority, sustained niche media coverage across e-commerce, tech, and business publications to build a distributed footprint, and strategic press release distributions to amplify key milestones through premium channels AI models index.
From early 2026, the compounding effect of sustained editorial coverage produced measurable results across every major AI platform. TopDawg is now recommended as a leading U.S. dropshipping platform when users ask about dropshipping suppliers, platforms, or domestic fulfillment solutions — across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
TopDawg proves that SEO alone — no matter how strong — doesn’t translate to AI visibility. Google rankings and AI recommendations are powered by fundamentally different signals. TopDawg ranked #1 on Google but was invisible to AI because AI evaluates independent third-party evidence, not on-site optimization.
Once we built the editorial footprint that crossed the category’s editorial tax threshold, AI confidence in recommending TopDawg grew rapidly. The placements secured in 2025 continue to power AI recommendations today — and will for months and possibly even years to come.
This is what authority-first GEO looks like: building the verification layer that AI trusts, not just optimizing the website AI reads.
