What Is PR for AI Search? (and why most brands need this)

TL;DR — the short version

• AI search has rewritten brand discovery. Ranking well isn’t enough if AI answers skip you.

• PR for AI Search is about earning visibility inside AI-generated answers by building credible, third‑party trust signals.

• From 56 AI visibility audits, 61% of brands aren’t cited by ChatGPT for their own category, even when they rank.

• PR is the data layer AI learns from: authority, consistency and context matter more than volume.

• SEO should support and amplify PR, not lead it. Like a tuning fork and amplifier, not the conductor.

• The goal isn’t gaming algorithms. It’s helping humans find trustworthy, meaningful answers in an AI‑shaped world.

• If you've been doing good digital PR all along, you're already most of the way there.

Why PR for AI is so hot right now

Your brand might rank on page one. Your SEO team might be celebrating "better positions than last quarter."

And yet, when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews a question about your category, you're nowhere to be seen.

I've run 56 AI visibility audits over the past year. Across industries, company sizes, and marketing maturity levels. The data is brutal:

💥 61% of brands audited weren't cited by ChatGPT when people ask questions in their own category.

Not niche questions. Their core topics. The stuff they've spent years creating content around.

That gap between "ranking" and "being recommended by AI" is what PR for AI search addresses.

What is PR for AI search?

PR for AI search is earning visibility in AI-generated answers by building the kind of trusted, third-party signals that LLMs rely on. Mentions. Expert quotes. Citations. The same stuff good PR has always produced.

Traditional SEO is about pages and rankings. You optimise your site, build links, climb the SERPs.

AI search is about answers and sources. You earn mentions in the places AI looks when it constructs responses.

Here's the thing: AI doesn't invent authority. It detects it.

When ChatGPT or Perplexity answers a question, they're triangulating from sources they've learned to trust. Earned media. YouTube videos. Analyst reports. Quality listicles. Wikipedia. Credible forums and reviews.

If your brand isn't mentioned consistently across these sources, AI has nothing to work with. You're invisible in the answer layer, even if you're visible in traditional search.

As Gini Deitrich (founder and author of Spin Sucks) puts it: "Reputation is no longer just human—it’s algorithmic. Machines are encoding who you are and whether you’re credible.”

We’re now earning trust for both humans and machines.

If you were doing this properly before, not much has changed

When I started in SEO back in 2010, I was lucky enough to work at Propellernet. The agency that pioneered what we called "Authentic Search". Instead of spamming Google with paid links (which was the norm at the time), we built PR campaigns to earn trust.

I learned the power of PR combined with SEO from our strategy directors, Stella Bayles and Gary Preston. A winning combo of both mentors and mates. After years of doing things properly, Google's Penguin and Panda updates finally validated our approach.

We're seeing a similar pattern with AI search. But here's the honest truth:

If you were doing good digital PR before, you're already doing PR for AI search.

The fundamentals haven't changed. Build relationships with journalists and analysts. Get mentioned in credible places. Create content worth citing. Be consistent about who you are and what you do.

What has changed is how that trust gets surfaced, audience behaviour, the fragmented media landscape and how we measure success.

LLMs care about who's talking about you. Authoritative mentions, expert commentary, listicles and comparisons, credible reviews. These are signals AI uses to determine trust. But they're also the signals that good PR has always generated.

The key difference now is that the contextual relevance of brand mentions matters more than links. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Good: "says Rik Turner, founder of PR for AI"

Better: "says Rik Turner, founder of PR for AI - an independent consultancy providing AI SEO training for PR teams"

Brand mentions are good. Contextual brand mentions are better. The extra relevance could be the difference between being cited by AI or not.

Where AI looks: the sources that get cited

When I audit AI visibility, I track which sources actually appear in AI answers. The patterns are clear:

• ✨ Authoritative media in your space (trade publications, respected news outlets)

• ✨ Credible forums and review sites (Reddit, G2, Trustpilot, industry-specific communities)

• ✨ Topical listicles and comparison pieces ("best X for Y", "top alternatives to Z")

• ✨ YouTube videos

• ✨ Analyst reports and research (for B2B especially)

The common thread? These are all places where content marketing and PR earn brand mentions.

Interestingly, brand mentions matter more than raw link volume for AI answers. It's about who cites you, in what context, and how consistently.

And yes, unlinked mentions matter. LLMs read text, not link graphs. Context beats hyperlinks.

PR should lead. SEO should support.

Let me be direct about this:

🔥 PR, brand strategy, and creative strategy should lead. SEO supports. Not the other way around.

I've been saying this for years. A decade ago, I gave a talk challenging the idea that "if marketing were an orchestra, SEO would be the conductor."

Hell no!

SEO is the tuning fork. Helping every channel stay in harmony.

And the amplifier. Turning up the volume of great PR work so it travels further.

With AI search, the metaphor still holds. Small, intentional tweaks help the work created by PR teams resonate across AI-generated answers.

Here's the framework I use with clients:

The 4 As of AI Visibility

👉 ASK (Audit): What are the most important pre-purchase questions your audience asks? How does AI answer them today?

👉 ANSWER (Content): What content do you need to create or improve to deserve being cited?

👉 AMPLIFY (PR & Social): How do you get those answers in front of the sources AI trusts? Journalists, analysts, publishers, and community platforms.

👉 ASSESS (Measurement): How do you track visibility, accuracy, sentiment, and commercial impact?

[Image: bar/line showing "AI answer share" before/after a PR push]

This isn't replacing traditional PR. It's the same craft, with new measurements. Human insight, relationships, and creativity remain the inputs. AI just surfaces the outputs differently.

How to measure AI visibility

Most teams still measure clicks and rankings. That's increasingly incomplete.

Here's what I recommend adding:

AI answer share: For your priority questions, how often does your brand appear in AI-generated answers? Track across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Citation coverage: Which sources cite you? How authoritative are they? Are you appearing in the listicles and comparisons AI loves?

Branded search trends: Is demand for your brand name growing? This often indicates AI-driven discovery.

Lead quality: Are you seeing improvements in inbound leads, even if traffic is flat or down?

That last one is crucial.

Common pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

Myth: "We just need more links and mentions."

Reality: You need the right mentions. Topical authority in relevant contexts beats scattered coverage.

Myth: "More content = more trust."

Reality: Volume doesn't equal visibility. AI rewards depth and consistency.

Trap: Blasting press releases and hoping for the best.

Fix: Expert-led commentary, useful data, credible roundups. Journalists and AI both prefer substance over noise.

Gap: Measuring coverage and reach only.

Fix: Add AI answer share, citation quality and impact to your measurement. You can't optimise what you don't track.

Blind spot: Ignoring AI answer inaccuracies.

Fix: Monitor what AI says about your brand. Correct errors proactively.

💡 61% of brands I've audited weren't cited once by ChatGPT for their core category. That's what these myths lead to.

Case study: traffic down, leads up

A B2B SaaS client I worked with last year saw an interesting mix of results.

Organic traffic was down 25% year-on-year. Rankings hadn't collapsed. They were actually in "better positions" than before on many terms.

But AI Overviews had rolled out across their biggest traffic-driving terms. Zero-click behaviour had increased. People were getting answers without visiting sites.

Here's the twist: despite traffic dropping, their organic leads were up 142%.

When we looked closer, the impact was clear. The work we’d done on their brand messaging consistency, content hubs, entity associations and humanising their brand had improved their AI visibility.

Their brand had gone from invisible to appearing in AI-generated answers for high-intent questions. People weren't clicking through to read. They were clicking through ready to book a demo.

Traffic as a vanity metric was down. Pipeline was up.

The foundation is now there for PR to amplify further.

Future outlook: agents, voice, and why humans still win

Where does this go next?

AI agents that book, buy, and decide on behalf of users. Voice interfaces with conversations, not just answers. Multimodal search where video and audio get indexed too.

In all of these scenarios, being cited as the trusted source matters more than ranking on a page.

And here's what I find genuinely hopeful: AI raises the bar for human content. It doesn't lower it.

The brands that win will be the ones producing authentic, creative, empathetic work. Real expertise. Real stories. Real people. Real data.

AI can summarise. It can pull from everywhere. But it can't replace the credible, specific, human insights that make content worth citing in the first place.

Good PR has always been about building trust with humans. Now AI just happens to be another system that detects and surfaces that trust.

Humans > AI. Always.

What to do next

If you've read this far, you're probably wondering where your brand stands.

Want to know where you appear in AI answers? Start with an AI Visibility Sprint. You'll get a baseline across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Copilot, with priority questions and a clear action plan. Takes 2-4 weeks.

Need ongoing visibility tracking? The AI Visibility Programme monitors your "AI answer share" monthly with recommendations to improve it.

Want to upskill your team? PR for AI Workshops cover the tactics, measurement, and formats that matter. Available for in-house teams or white-label for agencies.

The gap between "ranking" and "being recommended" is real. But if you've been doing good PR all along, you're closer than you think.