Case studies · In progress
Bae by ppl.studio: an AI companion built on what people search
Bae is an AI partner with memory: pick a face, and they text you and remember you. Three minutes to start, no login, no card. People search for exactly that, "ai girlfriend no sign up", and Bae is there when they do. Its videos are made with ppl.studio. This season Next Big picks what comes next on search: here is what it picked, and what happened.
Visit bae.ppl.studio. A Next Big portfolio site. Started October 26, 2026, updated October 26, 2026; next numbers December 2, 2026. Every source.
Three things to know
- Bae got 7,916 clicks from Google in the four weeks to October 18, 2026, up from about 285 a week in late July to 2,003 a week in mid October.
- 1,778 of those clicks came from searches for an AI companion with no sign-up or no login: the promise Bae makes on its first screen.
- On October 26 Bae aimed four pages at searches Next Big flagged as rising. Their numbers come in on December 2, beside Bae's other pages.
Bae by ppl.studio in numbers
- 7,916clicks from GoogleSearch Console, September 21 to October 18, 2026
- 60,462Google impressionsthe same four weeks
- 7×weekly clicks since July285 in the week of July 27, 2,003 in the week of October 12
- 1,778clicks from no sign-up searches"ai girlfriend no sign up", "no login" and the like, the same four weeks
Why it works
Most AI companion apps ask for an account before the first message. A large share of the people searching for one say up front that they don't want to: "ai girlfriend no sign up", "ai gf no login", "ai girlfriend free, no sign-up". Bae starts without either, so its pages answer those searches word for word.
Around the chat sits a library of pages people search for: comparisons, alternatives, guides. That's where the clicks land, and the library is where Next Big's picks go.
Source: Bae
Where ppl.studio comes in
Bae's TikTok posts are made with ppl.studio, the AI content studio: text-message videos, carousels and app lists, several a day. ppl.studio publishes those numbers itself, including the part that didn't work: views stalled at TikTok's first test audience, and the text-chat videos held viewers far longer than talking ones.
Next Big feeds that side too. It reads which video formats are working for other accounts on TikTok and hands them to ppl.studio, tagged by how well each is proven.
Source: ppl.studio: Bae on TikTok, what 128 posts made with ppl.studio did, ppl.studio
What Next Big does for it now
Every night Next Big reads Bae's Search Console and Google's index, follows its searches on the Next Big Pulse, and lists the next moves. This season it flagged four searches rising faster than Bae's pages were answering them, among them "replika alternatives", up 550% in three months, and "ai girlfriend apps", up 192%.
How it gets scored
Each change is judged on its target search's clicks, click rate and position, and set beside the 124 Bae pages left alone. The after weeks are November 2 to 29, giving Google a week to read the changes. Their numbers go up on December 2, wins and misses alike.
What Next Big picked, and what happened
Clicks of impressions for each page's target search in Google Search Console. Before: September 21, 2026 to October 18, 2026. After: November 2, 2026 to November 29, 2026. The season lifts every page, so the pages left alone are the line to beat.
| Page and search | Change | Before | After |
|---|---|---|---|
| /best/ai-girlfriends “best ai girlfriend” | Title "Best AI Girlfriend Apps of 2026, Tested and Ranked", a description Google no longer cuts off, and an intro that opens on the question. | 0 of 19 (0%), position 21.8 | Not yet |
| /best/ai-girlfriends “ai girlfriend apps” | The same page and title: both searches in one line. | 1 of 1 (100%), position 47 | Not yet |
| /ai-girlfriend/unlimited-messages “ai girlfriend unlimited messages” | Title and H1 "AI girlfriend with unlimited messages", and the free cap corrected to 30 messages a day where the page said 50. | 3 of 76 (3.95%), position 10.5 | Not yet |
| /alternatives/replika “replika alternatives” | Title "Best Replika Alternatives in 2026: 7 Ranked by Memory", and an opening line for people switching. | 0 of 7 (0%), position 37.1 | Not yet |
| Every other Bae page | Left alone (124 pages) | 7,838 of 59,724 (13.12%) | Not yet |
Sources
Run this on your own site
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