How are potential customers finding businesses like yours? Increasingly, they are probably querying AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude, along with traditional search engines that now offer AI summaries.
Naturally, you want your business to be appearing in the answers these AI tools provide. That means you need an AI search strategy or Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) strategy to compliment your existing SEO strategy.
The good news is that much of GEO builds on established SEO best practice, with PR at its very heart. But what exactly is GEO and how does PR drive your visibility in AI answers? Read on to discover how PR powers AI search success and how you can start building your own AI search strategy.
What is GEO?
In a nutshell, GEO is the practice of learning how to get your brand to appear in AI answers and then performing certain steps to boost the chances of this happening.
There is a lot of overlap with SEO because both reward credible, well-structured content and authoritative third-party coverage. But instead of just matching keywords, AI search maps out how your brand connects to your industry through trusted online mentions. Another key difference is that AI search doesn’t rely so much on backlinks. AI models evaluate sentiment and context, using earned media to understand your brand.
Why is PR essential in AI search?
PR is essential in AI search because AI platforms weigh up multiple sources, they don’t just look at your website. That means if your brand isn’t being talked about it’s very unlikely to be cited well in AI search.
PR can therefore increase the likelihood of citations by building consistent references to your brand in earned media and helping AI tools to clearly contextualise and explain who you are and what you do.
An article from Forbes revealed that these AI search tools favour reputable publications, consistent messaging, third-party validation and a strong positioning, all of which happen to be aspects of PR.
On top of this, Muck Rack’s “What is AI Reading?” study analysed 25 million links and uncovered that earned media made up 84% of citations, with journalism accounting for 27% of this figure.
Why are brand mentions vital?
One way AI search differs from traditional search is that instead of companies trying to rank as high as possible, the immediate goal is to be included within an answer. There’s technically no need for the answer to provide a link; your business may just need a mention, as AI reads the content. For traditional SEO, an unlinked press mention is a missed backlink; for AI search, that same mention provides the semantic context the model needs to recommend you.
Research from Cronyx Digital demonstrates that brands in the top 25% of web mentions gain on average 169 AI Overview mentions, which is over 10 times the number the top 50% achieve. Visibility is therefore crucial, meaning you need to get your brand talked about, specifically via high-authority or high-traffic publications.
Why is earned PR so valuable?
As Semrush explains, PR has always been about boosting trust and conveying authenticity through authoritative sources that check their facts and can’t risk their reputations. Earned PR is reliable and valued because it isn’t easy to achieve.
Research from SHADOW suggests that this independent validation from trustworthy sources makes AI platforms more likely to cite them. This is especially true of training data, which is biased towards information from high-authority publications. As a result, earned PR supports AI search as well as SEO.
Does Reddit help with GEO?
Until recently, Reddit was a popular source for AI search tools but analysis from Promptwatch showed that Reddit citations were declining across ChatGPT and Google’s AI search tools (in fact, citations from Reddit have plummeted on ChatGPT). Search Engine Journal pointed out that similar drops have happened in the past, but the point is that relying on Reddit to boost your credibility isn’t a resilient strategy, as posts on Reddit will never have the credibility of solid, relevant PR coverage.
This is because press coverage is written by trusted journalists and published on established platforms. Reddit can also play a useful supporting role in your communications strategy, particularly where genuine discussions already exist, but its open nature means the content is easier to manipulate. It’s therefore unsurprising that Reddit citations have started to fall across several AI platforms, and we’d argue that this trend will only increase going forwards as AI tools naturally seek to filter out spam and improve the quality of their results.
How to use PR to improve your AI search visibility
Research from AuthorityTech found that earned media via trustworthy news outlets and relevant trade publications trigger the majority of AI search citations. But how do you go about actually making this happen? We recommend the following steps for creating a PR strategy to drive positive AI search citations.
1. Identify the topics you want to be known for
The best place to start is deciding what you wanted to be cited for. Do you solve a particular problem or do you want to be known as experts in a certain field?
Once you know this, you can focus your PR activity in reinforcing this association through consistent, highly-targeted messaging.
2. Prioritise structure
Content structure is crucial for both SEO and AI search because it helps search technology parse and understand the information. For example, Notified reports that AI has a preference for press releases because of their predictable formatting. And a 2026 study from the University of Tokyo uncovered that structural optimisation resulted in a 17.3% boost to citation rates.
3. Make sure that you’re original
The academic study ‘GEO: Generative Engine Optimization’ found the aspects that enhanced the quality of a piece, such as an authoritative tone, statistics, quotations from experts and explanations of any jargon, increased AI search visibility by as much as 40%. SEO.com also argues that AI tends to prioritise new information, so anything original, especially data, and timely will help you show up.
Examples of how you can make yourself original include adding quotes and opinions from your founder or senior leadership team, or draw on the knowledge of your technical experts. You could share case studies that showcase why your brand is brilliant and unique, conduct original research or use internal data, such as figures showing a boost in sales within a particular area. The key is to give journalists and search platforms information they can’t find elsewhere.
4. Align PR for GEO with SEO and other marketing channels
PR supports both SEO and GEO. Authoritative coverage can generate the high-quality backlinks that remain important for SEO, while brand mentions and contextual references can help AI platforms understand and cite your business. The important thing is that all your marketing communications and channels are consistent.
GEO also takes into account content from social media platforms such as YouTube, where AI can read video metadata and transcripts. It also looks at LinkedIn for expert opinions posted as thought leadership, so make sure you’re communicating the same expertise across your PR, website and social media channels.
5. Track what you can
AI tracking is still in its infancy, but there are currently tools that can help you to better understand if your AI strategy is working.
At Luminous, we’re always focused on how PR activity drives sales, which means that we always recommend keeping an eye on your web analytics in tools like Google Analytics or Hubspot, drilling into referrals to see if AI tools have boosted conversions. Online journeys aren’t always straightforward, so it’s also worth asking new clients how they first learned about you when they get in touch.
You can also accurately track your appearance in Google’s AI overviews using tools like Semrush or Moz. Tracking other metrics, like ChatGPT or Claude citations, is currently problematic because you can’t see the exact prompts that people type into these platforms, so any tool trying to track citations is working with huge blind spots.
AI tracking therefore needs significant expertise and guidance, and a monitoring platform that’s transparent about what it’s tracking and able to help you interpret the bigger picture about the impact PR is having on your brand’s online visibility.
Get started with your PR AI search strategy
Now you know the steps to build a PR AI search strategy, you may still have questions like “how do I ensure our brand gets coverage?” “what makes a story newsworthy?” and “what types of content should I choose?”. We can help through our PR for AI search services. From visibility audits to brand mentions, we’ll make sure your brand is seen by AI search (and therefore actual humans too!).
Contact us today.
By Kirsty Jarvis
Kirsty, our CEO and founder, has spent the past two decades in PR and marketing roles, resulting in a wealth of experience leveraging the power of media and creating impactful campaigns for hundreds of startups and well-known brands.
