Nicolas Sitter
Tech enthusiast running data-driven experiments on AI search, the web, and digital platforms — and publishing everything here. The deepest body of work is hotel-industry research; the cross-industry field tests live in the Playground, and the practical playbooks are in the Guides.
Featured Research
All ResearchThe AI Hotel Landscape 2026
Anatomy of a ChatGPT Hotel Search
Hotel Schema.org Adoption Study
Gemini Answers From a Booking Tool
What Selects Google AI Mode's Entity Wrapper
AI Traffic Is Undercounted
AI Mode Stopped Linking Publishers
Best Western France: Does ChatGPT Know the Network?
Apart-Hotels in Paris on ChatGPT
From the Playground
The same measurement methodology, pointed at non-hotel local businesses — lighter, cross-industry, still real data.
Guides
AI Search for Hotels
The big picture: how hotels get found, recommended, and cited by AI search. A four-step framework — Diagnose, Owned Media, Earned Media, Measure — synthesising 30+ studies.
AI Visibility for Hotels
The complete AEO + GEO guide. How to get recommended by ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and Gemini — platform mechanics, data sources, 5 pillars, and an 8-step checklist.
ChatGPT Hotel Optimization
Inside ChatGPT's hotel search: 12 systems, 5 data providers, and the Sonic classifier. What to optimize and why.
Projects
All ProjectsMCP App Tracker
A daily-updated tracker of Claude's connector directory, from Anthropic's own API: every connector with tools, auth posture and the platform's published adoption signals (rank, popularity, trending) — plus day-over-day additions, removals and movers, and a travel email digest. ChatGPT apps next.
L'Étape du Tour 2025 Results Explorer
Every split of every rider at L'Étape du Tour de France 2025 (Albertville → La Plagne, 130.5 km): 13,649 classified finishers, rank flow across eleven timing points, and climb-by-climb leaderboards for the Côte d'Héry-sur-Ugine, the Col des Saisies, the Col du Pré, the Cormet de Roselend and the 19.7 km summit finish at La Plagne. A bigger field than 2026. Search yourself by name or bib.
L'Étape du Tour Femmes 2025 Results Explorers
Both courses of the 2025 Étape du Tour de France Femmes weekend at Chambéry. The 117 km (4,267 finishers) is results-only — the timing system withholds positions and its intervals account for 104 of 117.2 km, so no course is drawn rather than a wrong one. The 98 km (777 finishers) publishes clean splits and gets the full treatment: checkpoints, both ascensions, compare and a page per rider. Neither is a women's race: both fields are majority male.
Triathlon de l'Alpe d'Huez — the archive, 2015-2026
Eleven editions of the whole event, analysed: 31,140 classified finishes across the Triathlon L, the Triathlon M and the Duathlon. The L's winner is twenty minutes quicker than in 2015 while its median finisher is not; the M is the bigger race and the one where a third of finishers are now women; the montée de l'Alpe is the one segment that compares all three; and two people have finished every edition since 2015.
L'Étape du Tour Archive — Thirteen Years of Results
Every edition L'Étape du Tour has published since 2014: 10 races, 107,795 classified finishers, on a course that is never the same twice. Three years have no race — 2018 is absent from the timing provider's own database, 2020 and 2021 were cancelled. Includes the ranking clock that flipped between 2017 and 2019.
L'Étape du Tour Femmes Archive — Every Edition
Three races across two editions, 14,740 classified finishers, from the Chambéry weekend to the Mont Ventoux summit finish. The thing to know first: it is not a women's race — it is the open mass ride on a Tour de France Femmes stage route, and 71.3% of its finishers are men. The women's classification is reported separately, with each winner's placing in the mixed field alongside it.
Triathlon de l'Alpe d'Huez 2026 Results Explorer
Every split of every athlete at the Triathlon de l'Alpe d'Huez 2026, across all three races (Triathlon L, Triathlon M, Duathlon): 3,861 ranked finishers, leg-by-leg rank flow from the swim to the line, the 21 hairpins of the Montée de l'Alpe as its own leaderboard, transition rankings, and a page per athlete — with the second of the livestream where they cross the mat. Search yourself by name or bib.
Triathlon de l'Alpe d'Huez 2025 Results Explorer
The 2025 edition, rebuilt from the timekeeper's own result sheets: 3,747 classified finishers across the Triathlon L, the Triathlon M and the Duathlon, every leg split, and the overall position at the end of each leg. Fewer moving parts than 2026 on purpose — those sheets carry leg boundaries but no intermediate mats and no course distances, so there are no checkpoint pages and no speeds anywhere.
Triathlon de l'Alpe d'Huez — the archive, 2018-2024
Six more editions rebuilt from the timekeeper's own result sheets: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019 and 2018 — 16,984 classified finishers across eighteen races, every leg split and the overall position at the end of each leg. 2020 did not happen. The sheets change shape almost every year (five different column layouts, and three of them publish no sex at all), so each is parsed on its own terms rather than assumed.
La Marmotte Granfondo Alpes 2026 Results Explorer
Every split of every rider at La Marmotte Granfondo Alpes 2026 (177 km, Bourg d'Oisans → Alpe d'Huez over the Glandon, the Télégraphe and the Galibier): 5,005 classified finishers, a leaderboard for each col, rankings at all 12 timing mats, and the thing nobody explains — net vs gross time, the two neutralised descents, and the 1,322 riders whose official time was charged for a section the rest were credited for. Search yourself by name or bib.
La Marmotte — the archive, 2020-2026
Seven editions of La Marmotte Granfondo Alpes imported from four different sources and analysed together: 25,208 classified finishers, the two clocks the cycling press keeps confusing, the year roadworks moved the course to the Croix de Fer, and a 2024 winning time that turns out to be a finish clock minus the wrong start.
Marathon de Paris — the archive, 2013-2026
12 editions of the Marathon de Paris read from the results the timekeeper published: 520,581 classified finishers, the year the ranking clock moved from gun time to chip time and took the median finisher with it.
Semi de Paris — the archive, 2015-2026
11 editions of the Semi de Paris read from the results the timekeeper published: 395,723 classified finishers, the year the ranking clock moved from gun time to chip time and took the median finisher with it, and the 2016 results the timekeeper only ever published in part.
adidas 10K Paris — the archive, 2019-2026
7 editions of the adidas 10K Paris read from the results the timekeeper published: 182,508 classified finishers.
Marathon de Paris 2026 Results Explorer
Every split of every runner at the Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris 2026: 57,516 finishers, splits at every 5 km, negative-split, first-name and club rankings, and a page per runner. Search yourself by name or bib.
Semi de Paris 2026 Results Explorer
Every split of every runner at the HOKA Semi de Paris 2026: 49,281 finishers, splits at every 5 km, first-10 km and final-11.1 km leaderboards, first-name and club rankings, and a page per runner. Search yourself by name or bib.
L'Étape du Tour Femmes 2026 Results Explorer
Every split of every rider at L'Étape du Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2026 (Vaison-la-Romaine → Mont Ventoux): 9,696 finishers, 2,694 women, rankings at all 10 checkpoints, climb-by-climb leaderboards for Propiac, Suzette, Madeleine and the full Ventoux, and a page per rider. Search yourself by name or bib.
L'Étape du Tour 2026 Results Explorer
Every split of every rider at L'Étape du Tour de France 2026 (Bourg d'Oisans → Alpe d'Huez): rankings at all 12 checkpoints, climb-by-climb leaderboards for Croix de Fer, Télégraphe, Galibier and Sarenne, best climbers and descenders, and a page per rider. Search yourself by name or bib.
AI Hotel Landscape
Live weekly snapshot of how ChatGPT recommends hotels — 616 prompts, brand mentions, OTA vs direct source mix, sponsored ads, web-search behavior, map widget providers. Refreshed every Monday. Open data, open code.
My AI Visibility
Live dashboard tracking whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Mode cite nicolassitter.com when asked about my own niche — AI search for hotels. A frozen 31-prompt panel fires every Tuesday; every optimization action gets logged in public, so the dashboard doubles as the case study.
AI Hotel Memory
Interactive explorer for what AI models remember about hotels with web search OFF — pure parametric memory. Pick a city and a model to see the hotels it names and whether it knows their real, live website; toggle the weakest model to watch it invent web addresses. Companion to the AI Hotel Memory 2026 study.
Hotelrank
AI visibility platform for hotels — acquired by Lighthouse and being integrated into its Connect AI product. Tracks how AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity recommend hotels. The research lives on here; the product now ships inside Lighthouse.
Direct Hotels
Using public information to help hotels get more direct bookings. An open alternative to commission-heavy OTAs, built on publicly available data.
Hotel Schema Audit & Generator
Free schema.org audit + generator for hotels. Fetches a hotel homepage, scores its existing JSON-LD 0–100 against the rules from the Hotel Schema Adoption Study, then pre-fills the generator with the parsed values so only the gaps need fixing.
~$ agent-endpoints --list /llms.txt /api/posts.json /rss.xml /sitemap.xml