For years, brands have obsessed over how to rank on page one of Google. Need a recommendation, a new product, a service provider, or an answer to a question? Google was usually the starting point, and getting into those first few blue links mattered enormously.
AI is changing that behaviour. People aren’t just Googling anymore. They’re asking ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity direct questions, and instead of getting a page of links, they’re getting an answer—usually very quickly and very confidently.
For brands, that changes the question from how do we rank to how do we become part of the AI answer. That is where PR gets very interesting, and very exciting to be a part of.
AI search is changing what visibility means
There is a lot of conversation right now about Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO. You may also hear Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, because apparently marketing needed another acronym. For simplicity, we’ll stick with AEO.
At its simplest, AEO is about helping AI-powered search tools understand what your brand stands for, what it is known for, and when it should be surfaced as a credible answer to the questions your customers are asking.
Some of that is technical. Clear website copy matters. Structured FAQs matter. Consistent information across your digital footprint matters. SEO and owned content still matter. But there is another major piece of the equation: what are credible third parties saying about you? That’s where PR and earned media come in.
Muck Rack’s 2026 research analyzed more than one million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini and found that 89% of links cited in AI-generated answers come from earned media.
That is a pretty satisfying stat for PR people who have spent years being asked, “but what’s the ROI?” while paid media gets a neat little dashboard and PR sits off to the side as performance marketing’s fluffy, hard-to-measure cousin. PR has always influenced reputation. Now, it is increasingly influencing the actual answers people receive, even before they reach your website.
PR builds authority, not just awareness
One of my favourite ways to explain the difference between PR and advertising is this: advertising is you telling people you’re great, PR is other people telling people you’re great. And the second one holds a lot more weight.
You can call yourself the category leader on your website. You can describe your CEO as a visionary. You can say your technology is transformative. But authority becomes much stronger when credible media, industry experts, customers, and other third parties reinforce those claims. That has always been the value of PR. Now, it may have an entirely new application.
Imagine you are a CEO who wants to be known for adopting AI in financial services. You can publish articles on your own website about that topic, and you should. But if you are also regularly quoted in relevant business media, writing columns in trade publications, appearing on podcasts, contributing thoughtful commentary, and speaking at industry events about AI adoption, a much clearer pattern of authority begins to emerge.
You become associated with a specific subject matter expertise. That matters to journalists. It matters to customers. And now there is another audience paying attention: the machines synthesizing all of that information across the web.
At Category Communications, we have started thinking about this as answer ownership. Not simply, are we getting media coverage, but when someone asks a question that matters to our client’s business, are they consistently part of the answer? That is why we start partnerships off with an AEO audit.
What is the internet saying about your brand?
AI systems are not only looking at traditional media, although, as noted above, it is a major source. They’re drawing from a much broader mix of information, and different AI engines have very different information diets.
Think of them as four people at the same dinner party. ChatGPT reads the news, Claude knows the niche experts, Gemini has thoroughly researched your website, and Perplexity has been down a Reddit rabbit hole for the last three hours.
There is no single AI search algorithm to crack. And that means brands need to pay attention to the places they have historically had much less control over: Reddit threads, customer reviews, industry forums, comparison sites, app stores and other third-party platforms.
Because what your marketing team says about your brand is only one version of your reputation. What customers, employees, journalists and communities say about you is another. If your website says you provide the best customer experience in your category, but hundreds of Reddit comments and third-party reviews say otherwise, that disconnect matters. The opposite is also true. A brand with passionate customers, strong reviews, positive word of mouth and credible third-party validation is creating a much richer body of evidence around its reputation.
In an AI search environment, brands need to care not only about what they publish, but about what the internet believes about them.
PR, SEO and owned content are moving closer together
PR and SEO have always needed to be part of the same marketing marriage. Somewhere, on a park bench or bathroom stall, I’m sure someone has written: “SEO loves PR. XOXO. Forever and ever.” They may not always have sat beside each other at dinner, spoken the same language, or fully understood what the other one actually did, but they’ve been married for a long time. AI search is basically forcing them into couples therapy.
And, like most therapy, the answer is not that one of them was right all along. AEO is not a replacement for SEO. PR does not suddenly own AI search visibility. And strong earned media cannot make up for a website that does a terrible job explaining what your company actually does.
Different AI platforms pull from different sources in different ways. So the smartest approach is not PR versus SEO. It is PR and SEO and strong owned content.
Your website should clearly explain what you do, preferably without requiring a decoder ring. Your leadership team should have clearly defined areas of expertise, not just a vague ambition to be thought leaders. To be a thought leader, it helps to have some leading thoughts, and they should be shared. LinkedIn shouldn’t be ignored either. Meltwater’s analysis of 9.5 million citations across B2B categories ranked LinkedIn as the second-most-cited source behind YouTube, and roughly 75% of those LinkedIn citations came from individual voices rather than company pages. Your executives’ thought leadership may be doing more work than you think.
Your research and content should add something useful to the conversation and ideally be backed by data. Your PR program should earn credible third-party validation. Your reviews should reflect an actual customer experience worth talking about. And the conversations happening on Reddit, forums, and other third-party platforms should not be dismissed as something happening over there that the communications team can safely ignore. What people say about your brand when you are not controlling the message has always mattered. AI search just gives us another reason to pay very close attention.
All these signals contribute to the bigger picture of what your brand is known for, trusted for and ultimately surfaced for. Historically, PR, SEO, content, reputation and performance teams have often operated in separate lanes, each with their own dashboards, acronyms and slightly different definitions of success. AI search is giving brands a very good reason to bring them together.
And maybe, finally, PR stops showing up as performance marketing’s fluffy, hard-to-measure cousin and walks into the reporting meeting as its slick sidekick dressed in a trench coat full of data, ready to dump a stack of earned-media citations on the table and say, see, we told you this mattered.
So what should brands be doing now?
1. Decide what you want to be known for. Do not wait until you have a funding announcement or product launch to start building authority. Identify the topics that matter most to your business and where you genuinely have something useful to contribute.
2. Build authority consistently. One piece of coverage is great. A sustained pattern of credible media coverage, expert commentary, research, and thought leadership is much stronger.
3. Prioritize relevance over volume. A highly relevant industry publication may be more valuable for a specific area of expertise than a mainstream mention.
4. Pay attention to what people are saying when you are not in the room. Reddit, customer reviews, industry communities and other third-party platforms are part of your reputation. Brands need to understand those conversations, learn from them and address real issues rather than assuming owned messaging will overpower them.
5. Make owned, earned and executive content work together. Clear website copy, FAQs, executive bios, media coverage, research and contributed content should all reinforce the same areas of expertise.
The fundamentals of PR haven’t changed. You still need genuine expertise, a real point of view, credible stories and trust. What has changed is how much work that trust can do.
PR has always shaped what people know and believe about a brand. Increasingly, it can also help shape what machines understand about that brand—and whether it becomes part of the answer.
The brands that win won’t be the ones that suddenly scramble to do AEO. They’ll be the ones that invested in reputation long before they needed it. They will have years of credible media coverage, useful thought leadership, strong customer experiences, positive community conversations, and owned content reinforcing what they stand for. You cannot manufacture that authority overnight.
The brands that consistently invest in PR won’t just have a stronger reputation. They’ll have a head start on being the answer.
Key Takeaways
The core question has shifted from how do we rank to how do we become part of the AI answer—and PR is central to that shift.
Earned media carries outsized weight in AI-generated answers. 89% of links cited by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini come from earned media, not owned content.
Authority compounds through third-party validation. What credible media, experts, and customers say about a brand matters more than what a brand says about itself.
Different AI engines draw from different sources. There is no single algorithm to optimize for, which means reputation has to hold up everywhere, not just on a company’s own website.
AEO does not replace SEO or PR—it forces them to work together, alongside owned content and executive thought leadership.
Reputation built before it’s needed compounds. Brands that invest in PR consistently, rather than scrambling when a trend emerges, start with a head start on being the answer.
