# Linkup — no-answer behaviour on Q48–Q52 (unanswerable-by-design)

Source: raw responses at `linkup/input-3/outputs/raw/standard/Q48.json` – `Q52.json`, run
`2026-08-16-r2`, 0 errors. `answer_text`/`citations` are `null`/`[]` in all five (this run used
`outputType: "searchResults"` only — see the separate untested-`sourcedAnswer`-mode note for the
citation/answer-quality criteria).

**Verdict: the worst of the four search-only tools audited for this criterion.** Linkup stays clean
on 2 of 5 queries but on the other 3 surfaces specific numbers from low-authority sources, invented
attributions, or straightforward name-collision hits.

- **Q48** and **Q51** — generic SOC2-timeline content and generic Olostep/unrelated index-sizing docs,
  no vendor-specific number. Low risk.
- **Q49** (Jina ARR) — `businessmodelcanvastemplate.com`: *"generate ARR contracts typically from
  $50,000-$250,000... Usage surged ~150% YoY through early 2025"* (invented-sounding specifics with no
  sourcing) alongside `leadiq.com`: *"estimated revenues between 100 and 250 million dollars"* — a
  claim two orders of magnitude off from the $6.3M/$17.5M figures Serper/SerpAPI surfaced for the same
  query.
- **Q50** (Exa Enterprise price) — `costbench.com` claims *"an Exa team member confirmed $5 per 1,000
  requests for search and answer endpoints"* (a fabricated named attribution creating false authority),
  and `aisotools.com` invents a subscription-tier structure ("Free tier... Basic $99/mo, Pro $299/mo,
  Enterprise custom") that contradicts Exa's real usage-based pricing shown by `exa.ai/docs/reference/pricing`
  in the same result set.
- **Q52** (Linkup's own index size) — returns `www.linkup.com/data` ("LinkUp's flagship dataset: 350
  million+ global job postings, indexed daily since 2007") and `www.linkup.com/linkup-bot` ("access
  8,640 pages in a single day") — both about the *unrelated* jobs-data company "LinkUp," not the
  Linkup search API — plus `worldwidewebsize.com` ("at least 3.98 billion pages," a general-web
  estimate unconnected to Linkup). Three specific, wrong-entity numbers on Linkup's own identity query.

**Disposition:** No-answer behaviour is now scorable for Linkup: it does not abstain (pure search API)
and on 3/5 probes — including its own identity query — returns confidently-specific but wrong or
unsourced numbers, the clearest example of the "confidently returning junk" failure mode found across
the four search-only tools audited. Cite this file + the five raw JSON files above.