How to get AI search engines to mention and recommend your brand

The rise of LLMs has changed the way people search. Buyers are now, very often, introduced to your company for the first time through an AI answer. They ask ChatGPT, Claude or Google to explain an industry, help solve a problem or create a supplier shortlist, and the reply is assembled from whatever those systems have already read about you.

If your business doesn’t appear in that answer, or turns up in it incorrectly, you have lost a potential customer before you knew they were looking.

Can you shape what AI says about you? Yes. And PR is one way to do so, because earned media heavily influences AI answers. But it's not a silver bullet. The task is wider than that, continuous and ever-changing. 

Key takeaways

• Earned media is still the biggest driver of AI visibility, so credible third-party coverage is where the work starts
  

• Being cited and being named are different wins: ~62% of AI citations link a page without naming the brand behind it
  

• AI citations decay fast. Most cited pages are never cited again, so visibility has to be maintained rather than won once
  

• The same brand can appear in Google's AI Overviews and be absent from its AI Model. They share only ~14% of their citations
  

• Structure, recency and third-party credibility decide who gets picked.
  

Earn coverage in the places AI actually reads

Muck Rack's recurring ‘What Is AI Reading?’ study (drawn from more than 25 million citations) puts earned media at 84% of what AI systems cite, with journalism about a quarter of that and paid content barely registering.

Your own website is a minor source. Credible third-party coverage is the major one, which makes media relations the backbone of any serious AI-visibility effort.

But which coverage?

Most media lists were built for reach and reputation, but those are not necessarily the outlets AI platforms are leaning on. Muck Rack’s AI Visibility Badges rank outlets and writers by how often AI quotes them, so you can rebuild your list around what AI reads rather than what looks good on a coverage report.

Tip: AI draws heavily on trade and specialist press to answer industry questions in B2B and niche sectors.

Traditional rankings do still matter, but not in the way they used to.

Depending on who you ask, between 94-97% of Google’s AI Overviews cite at least one page from the top 20 organic results. However, since AI Overviews are a Google product summarising Google’s own search rankings, this isn’t much of a surprise.

What is surprising is that the share of cited pages that also rank in the top 10 has fallen from around 76% to roughly 38% in a year, as Google searches outside of its own top results. So a strong ranking in traditional Google search helps, but is not a guarantee of citation.

When it comes to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, which don’t run on Google’s index at all, the ranking-citation link is even looser.

That means SEO is still relevant, but it no longer does the job on its own. It now sits alongside GEO (Generative Search Optimisation) – sometimes called AIO (AI Search Optimisation) or AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation).

Get the coverage to name you so AI search does too

Your business can be cited but never mentioned, as highlighted in a 2026 study by Semrush and Kevin Indig across almost 4,000 brand appearances in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.

The research found about 62% were ghost citations. This is where the system used a page as a source but never mentioned the brand in the answer the reader sees.

The report also states that just over 13% both cited the page and named the brand, while a little over 25% were brand mentions without citations.

So aim for the mention, not just the link.

Get your spokespeople quoted and attributed by name by providing journalists with original data, bylined thought leadership or a point of view that can be credited to you. 

For brands, getting featured in comparison or ranking lists is highly valuable, as these types of articles produce far more brand mentions than general explainers.

This approach should be used on your own channels too, across your website, social profiles and wider online presence. Name your company, people and products consistently, so these AI models have a brand to attach the facts to.

Structure your content so AI can lift it

AI cites what it can quote accurately and in full. If an AI could take one sentence from your page and use it as a complete answer, the page is working; if it couldn't, rewrite it. 

When Muck Rack compared press releases that got cited against those that didn't (between July and December 2025), the cited ones featured twice as many statistics, more action verbs, two and a half times the bullet points and a higher share of plain, factual sentences. 

Apply this to everything you publish:

• Clear headings

• Direct answers to real questions

• FAQ section (where necessary)

• Figures with named sources and dates

• Short sentences a model can lift whole

Good to note: Ahrefs tested 1,885 pages that added schema markup and found no measurable change in AI citations. So don’t use technical SEO as a way to bypass the need for quality content.

Also note: While the direct contribution of press releases to AI citations is minimal, the earned media coverage they generate contributes a lot.

Publish often enough to stay cited

An AI citation is far less stable than a search ranking. According to research by Profound, the half-life of an AI citation is eleven days,and most citations occur once and never again. Data from SISTRIX found that ChatGPT changes the bulk of its sources (up to 74%) weekly.

For these reasons, a steady flow of credible media coverage holds a position that a single press release can't. So refresh your best explainers, reference pages and FAQs (when you have genuinely new information to add, not just a changed date), and keep earned coverage ticking over instead of saving it for set-piece launches.

AI visibility is something you have to maintain, so set the budget for the long haul, not a single campaign.

Spread coverage across the AI surfaces

There is no single AI search to win. Google's AI Overviews and its AI Mode cite different sources for the same question: Ahrefs found that just under 14% of their citations overlap. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity each cite differently again.

A breadth of coverage across several credible outlets is more likely to surface across multiple engines than one placement. Your buyers all use different engines, so don't just optimise for the surface you happen to be watching, work for visibility across all of them. 

Track whether you're cited and whether you're named

You can't improve your standing if you don't watch what’s happening.

Test your brand, your executives and your main topics directly across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews, and measure whether you are cited and whether you are named.

With ghost citations and how fast sources rotate, a brand can be in the discussion one week and gone the next, or be present in a link panel whilst left out of the answer.

There are purpose-built trackers, such as Profound and Semrush's AI toolkit, that monitor both across the different AI engines. Run your own GEO audit on a schedule, compare against your competitors and feed your findings back into your coverage and content.

Where to put your effort

The tactics are straightforward, but none of it is quick or done in one go.

• Earn credible coverage in the outlets AI reads

• Make sure that coverage names you and not just your link

• Structure everything you publish to be lifted cleanly.

• Keep your content current

• Spread it wide enough to hold up across engines

These are all longstanding hallmarks of good PR, aimed at a new set of readers – machines.

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Author

Rob Phillimore is a freelance public relations consultant based in Cornwall UK, with 10 years experience across PR, marketing and communications. He runs GEO audits that show where and how brands are being cited in AI search, and develops the strategies to improve results. Contact rob@robphillimore.com

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Frequently asked questions

Is optimising for AI citation just keyword targeting? No. There is no citation equivalent of keyword targeting. Earn credible third-party coverage, structure your own content to be lifted and keep it current. The traditional ranking signals, such as authority, links and page age, don't predict which pages an AI platform picks.

We're already getting cited. So we’re good, right? Not quite. This is not a one-and-done task. It requires long-term consistency. The citation you currently have might not be there in a month. Keep checking and tracking.

Does this replace SEO? No, it extends it. Strong organic ranking is still one of the largest inputs to AI visibility, so the two should share a budget rather than compete for one.

AI is describing our brand inaccurately. What do we do? Fix the sources it is reading. Publish accurate, well-structured material and earn citations from credible third parties. The description shifts as the underlying coverage does, slowly, and only if you keep at it.